Review: Winners by Danielle Steel

Danielle Steel

Title: Winners

Author: Danielle Steel

Published: 2013 by Bantam Press

Pages: 334

Find it at: Amazon

My Rating: 3.5/5

Goodreads Blurb!

When a horrific chairlift accident leaves 17-year-old competitive skier Lily Thomas paralyzed, she must come to grips with the fact that she'll not only be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, but will never fulfill her lifelong dream of winning Olympic gold. Meanwhile, her wealthy father, who has doted on Lily since her mother died when she was three, is devastated as he watches his only child lose all she once cherished and suffer through the arduous road to recovery. 

But just as all hope seems lost, Lily meets Teddy, a young man even more badly injured than she, but as doggedly determined to live an enriching life. Danielle Steel is at her best in this powerful story of a father and daughter triumphing together over unthinkable tragedy, creating new lives for themselves and providing hope for others along the way.

My Thoughts! 

Winners revolves around restructuring your life after a tragedy. 17 year old Lily Thomas is a ski champion training for the Olympics. During a holiday she suffers an accident that makes her paraplegic for life. The story is about Lily, her father whose life revolves around his only child and others who're associated with them in different ways. Almost everyone has been in a tough situation at one point or the other, and the story tells how Bill Thomas, Lily's father, makes life easy and worth living for everyone. Once he's accepted his child's fate (after being in denial and having the world's best doctors look at her), he strives to do everything he can to make her life amazing, and help others like her. 

With a friend's help, he manages to build a facility for SCI kids, a project that meant a whole new life for not just the patients, but the many people he teamed up to make this project a reality. Lily meanwhile copes with her new life with a lot of optimism among moments of despair. She befriends Teddy in the rehab facility, a boy her own age and strikes a grand friendship. She's given a new lease of life when her physical fitness tutor suggests she try for the Paralympics and with a renounced zest for skiing, she starts training for it while coping up with school. 

The story's good and surmises that not all lives that seem perfect remain in that form forever. Human lives are frequently encountered by sadness, loss and depression and those don't look at perfection or poverty. They strike everyone. And when it a good life shattered, it takes effort to feel good about life again. Lily's strength and willpower, her passion for skiing and love for her father makes her go through her recovery and future life. Many people are involved in making it better for her. Her doctor, Jessie, who faces a tragedy of her own when her loving husband Tim dies, leaving four children with her. Teddy, the new friend who becomes her soul twin and best friend. Everyone who wants to help Lily are approached by her dad and they help him build The Lily Pad, the new facility for children. 

The characters seemed well-formed but some of the relationships (work and personal) seemed a little "too" perfect to me. In fact, a lot of things seemed to fit in tremendously well and mostly because Bill was indeed a billionaire. I'm not biased, but I'm sure the way Lily's life transformed even after such an injury, it wouldn't have been the same had her dad been a middle class man. But then the book is about the so-called perfectionists and none of the characters are snobbish and apart from what he does for her treatment and building the facility, there's not much "boasting" about it. In the end it's just a father and daughter's story and how they make "winners" out of everyone involved in The Lily Pad project. 

The writing although simple and easy, seemed a little repetitive to me. There is little deviation from the main theme, although it does go into other characters' personal lives too. It just could have been a shorter book, I guess. I enjoyed some of the lighter moments, especially Teddy's dialogues and it wasn't a really depressing book, but not something absolutely profound either. It's simple, nice and gives a good message. A little "too" perfect for my taste, but it's a happy ending, so that's cool! 

It's an easy read for readers looking for a story about hope, determination and triumph in the face of tragedy. Recommended for: Young Adult, Teenagers, Adult readers.

"It's just when we need it most that we don't reach out for help. And I look at what Carole went through and realize how insignificant my problems were, even if I thought they were monumental and worth ending my life over. They weren't. And thank God I didn't. Look at all the good things that have happened since... It's a whole new life."

Thank you Random House publishers for this book! :)

Review: A Gift of Hope by Danielle Steel

Danielle Steel

Title: A Gift of Hope

Author: Danielle Steel

Genre: Non-Fiction

Published: 2012 by Bantam Press (Random House Group)

Find it at: Amazon

Pages: 128

From the book’s cover

In A Gift of Hope, author Danielle Steel shows us how she transformed the pain of losing her beloved son into a campaign of service that enriched her life beyond what she could imagine. For eleven years, Danielle Steel took to the streets with a small team to help the homeless of San Francisco. She worked under cover of darkness, distributing food, clothing, bedding, tools and toiletries to the city’s most vulnerable citizens. She sought no publicity for her efforts and remained anonymous throughout. Now she has chosen to tell her story to bring attention to their plight.

In this unflinchingly honest and deeply moving memoir, the famously private author speaks out publicly for the first time about her work among the most desperate members of society. She offers achingly acute portraits of the people she met along the way-and issues a heartfelt call for more effective action to aid this vast, deprived population. Determined to supply the homeless with the basic necessities to keep them alive, she ends up giving them something far more powerful: a voice.

By turns candid and inspirational, Danielle Steel’s A Gift of Hope is a true act of advocacy and love.

My thoughts

This small book that talks about the author, Danielle Steel’s experience as she went out and started helping the homeless in her city, is deeply moving and truly inspiring. It starts with how, after the loss of her much beloved son to bipolar disorder, she felt that she should do something, a little something to help others, but didn’t quite know what. It was once while she was praying that a thought occurred to her “help the homeless” and it was scary at first, because she had never felt very comfortable with the homeless. As she heard this strange, yet strong thought once or twice again in church, she decided to just do it. Nick (the son she lost) had been kind to the homeless and that fact convinced her to try it out once. One winter night, she set out with a colleague with warm jackets and sleeping bags (about 40) and socks and gloves and simply went up to the people in the streets and offered them what they had to give.

That was the first time and a deeply moving experience for Danielle. She hadn’t thought at first that she’d be doing it more than once, but that first night, the last people she met were “God’s Last Stop Curve Ball”, meaning, those who convinced her that she’d be out again, on another night, to help more people who need her. The book goes about how she gradually starts seeing more people with needs far greater than anyone with a roof over their heads, the way she learns by experience the precise things they need and what would help them to survive till the time they’re either out of the streets or till someone better comes along for help. Her aim is just to provide them with some basic necessities, usually warm clothes, so that they’re warm on cold nights. Her team gradually grows to about 11-13 adults who’re committed to the cause, going out in three vans full of supplies (now in black bags with clothing in different sizes and easy food and common stationery), finding the homeless in doorways and alleys and parks and street corners and handing out the supplies.

The best thing about the book and what this team (who call themselves “Yo! Angel”) is how they weren’t just giving out necessities to those in need, but also providing them hope. That’s what made the people they served (‘clients’) more grateful and happy. More than getting what they need, they know that someone cares for them, someone knows and want to help, that they’re not alone. Just this knowledge that you’re loved can make anyone live through a day and that’s precisely what Yo! Angels provided them. The gift of hope. The book’s full of instances, the author and her team’s doubts and decisions, struggles and helplessness in some cases, because whatever they did, they saw greater need. There never seemed to be enough. Also, it’s not easy to just go out and hand out supplies to the homeless. There are risks which the author talks about from her experience.

The book’s full of heart-warming stories of people they served, how grateful they were when they saw someone helping them get over their needs, if only little by little. It was a humbling experience to even read about it, especially how people either simply cried, or smiled or were thankful. Never in her eleven years of experience did she encounter greed. Some stories were humbling, some profound and all of them intense. There are thousands of people without a home, who shy away from shelters because of the dangers there. Even with government agencies, it’s not enough. The book ends with how, towards the end they included a teddy bear with each bag (on a whim of the author) and weird as it was, it was a gesture much loved by all! At the end, the author talks about other outreach agencies and teams that are working in different ways for the homeless and a plea for financial help, as the need now is ever more and increasing day by day.

I thought at first that I wouldn’t have much to write in a review of this book. How wrong I was! And I haven’t even included my usual comments on writing style and descriptive aspects. I guess it’s not needed. The author wrote the book because she wanted to spread information and facts about the need that’s there right in our backyards. It’s quite inspirational. This book is based in San Francisco, though and talks about the homeless situation in the States. I feel (and as the author points out) that this is one need that’s there everywhere. You can always take inspiration and start helping. Ending with some beautiful lines from the book:

“Whatever happens, I hope you’d continue to hold on to hope too. Even in our darkest moments, it is there. And in all its tenderness and beauty, even if hard to see sometimes, it is life’s greatest gift: the gift of hope. A precious gift to share.”   

Recommended for: Everyone, definitely. 

Thank you Random House publishers for this book! :)