The Wedding

April 3, 2000
Steel's 48th novel (after Irresistible Forces), about weddings Hollywood-style, gets off to a slow start, but just when the singsong prose and bland introductory details begin to get frustrating the plot picks up steam. Beautiful, brainy lawyer Allegra Steinberg's life is one drama after another--once she gets rid of her boyfriend, philandering dullard Brandon Edwards. Her clients are superstar musicians and actors who phone her at 2 a.m. because they've fallen in love or gotten arrested or think they're being stalked. Her family are superstars, too: Mom is TV director Blaire Scott, Daddy is Golden Globe humanitarian-of-the-year producer Simon Steinberg, and then there's her 17-year-old sister, Sam, a leggy model whose pregnancy throws everyone for a loop. Steel's characters are already over-the-top, but leave it to this clever megaselling author to throw not one but three weddings into the mix. Movie stars Carmen Conners and Alan Carr elope, wig-and-polyester-style, in Las Vegas, and Sam secretly marries Jimmy Mazzoleri, who isn't the father of her baby. The centerpiece of the tale, however, is the big one, complete with an odious wedding planner, for Allegra and Jeff Hamilton, a gorgeous, soulful New York writer. Although Steel's prose is predictable, no one can gainsay her charitable heart. On the far side of tears and melodrama, everyone in the cast is redeemed and paired off--even Jeff's anti-Semitic mother and Allegra's sociopathic biological father, who richly deserve one another.

February 1, 2000
By now, Steel knows what her audience wants, and she certainly delivers it in her forty-eighth novel. All the key elements are here: a glamorous Hollywood setting along with the beautiful people and all their insecurities. Allegra Steinberg is a 29-year-old Hollywood insider. Her father is an Oscar-winning producer, and her mother is an Emmy-winning writer. But what makes her parents different is that they have a loving relationship and have not succumbed to the typical dysfunctional stereotype, which makes Allegra's problems with relationships difficult to understand. She always picks men who are unwilling to commit, and her latest love interest, Brandon, is no different. After two years, he still hasn't gotten a divorce. After yet another disappointment, Allegra goes on a business trip and meets Jeff, to whom she is instantly attracted. She stays true to Brandon, but when she gets home and finds him cheating, she turns immediately to her new beau. In whirlwind-mode, she finds herself engaged, and Jeff, one of those hard-to-find good men, helps her deal with her conflicts and put her work in perspective. Allegra had been on call 24 hours a day to her movie-star and rock-star clients, but now that she is in love and is loved in return, she knows to make time for happiness. In peak form, Steel presents a truly enjoyable tale of Hollywood glitz in what is at heart a good old-fashioned love story. ((Reviewed February 1, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)