First Sight

May 6, 2013
The latest from the prolific grand dame of the beach read concerns iconic designer Timmie O'Neill. Despite her looks, talent, and good soul, Timmie has had it hard. From an early age she grew up in an orphanage; as an adult she was left by her husband after their four-year-old son died. Career obsessed, Timmie, nearing 50, laments never finding a worthy romantic partner. Steel's repetitive style hammers home the monotony of Timmie devoting her life to her job and trying to find comfort in the hit-or-miss company of model-actor Zack. While working in Paris, Timmie meets and bonds with a married, silver-fox doctor named Jean-Charles. Though he doesn't seem particularly happy in his marriage, Timmie isn't sure how to read Jean-Charles, and complications prevent him from leaving his wife. In between recurring passages recounting Timmie's life and feelings, Steel tosses a couple of curve balls connected to the designer's past that surprisingly don't feel out-of-place. A denouement that had been hinted at throughout the book gives the closing pages some much-needed suspense. Despite the tedium, Steel deftly stages heartstring tugging moments and heated falling outs, the stuff that guilty pleasures are made of.

March 15, 2013
The latest from best-selling author Steel. Timmie O'Neill is a youthful 48-year-old woman who rose from humble beginnings to create and run a successful fashion company for the past 23 years. Her life is all work, almost no play and, since the death of her only child and subsequent divorce 11 years earlier, no real love. Since she travels so often to Paris for the pret-a-porter shows, a friend gives her the name and number of a physician there just in case she needs one. Her appendix bursts, requiring surgery at the American hospital in Paris, where the good doctor meets her. The ambulance triggers memories of the childhood tragedy that left her an orphan at 5, requiring a hand to hold and a sympathetic ear, which the doctor offers. She tells him the story of the car accident that killed her parents, the years in the orphanage as one prospective family after another returned her until she walked out on her own at 16, started work as a waitress and began making clothing on the side. Decades later, when her fashion company brings in a fortune, she donates $1 million to nuns who open an orphanage that she not only supports financially, but in other ways, visiting the children and often joining them for the holidays that she would otherwise spend alone. The doctor, who is going through his own heartaches trapped in a loveless marriage, is drawn to her. The path to her destiny is filled with convoluted peregrinations, but Timmie keeps on and ultimately achieves what she wants and deserves. A novel about love, in all its heartbreaking and splendid forms.

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May 1, 2013
Fashion designer Timmie O'Neill runs a thriving empire, but she is all alone. After being orphaned as a girl, then losing her child to illness and her husband to divorce, she's terrified of being abandoned until an emergency appendectomy during her Paris ready-to-wear shows brings French doctor Jean-Charles Vernier into her life. The two fall for each other immediately, sharing desires they've never shared with anyone else, but Jean-Charles is trapped in a floundering marriage. When he's finally ready to divorce, his estranged wife is diagnosed with cancer, and Timmie is left alone again, this time with the secret that she's carrying his child. Timmie is an intriguing heroine because her private anxieties and public success are at odds, and she doesn't find peace until her late forties. Steel is one of the world's most popular authors, and this poignant romance is sure to thrill her many loyal fans and reach many new readers, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)