Against All Odds

Against All Odds
By: Danielle Steel

Against all odds... you might like this book....

Unrealistic and unrelatable.

Maybe I'm not the target audience. I don't know. But this book had all measures of dysfunction. The premise is basically a mother with 4 grown children who all make bad choices and have to overcome "the odds" to have a happy and successful life. But these are not your run of the mill bad choices- these are all BIG life decisions and they all know the mother disapproves and they all know their choices are risky and not very wise but they all STILL do them! Am I the only one who cares and respects my parent's opinion about big life decisions?

I don't know how we're supposed to feel about the characters in this story, but this book feels like a story about 5 stupid people (yes five- the mother makes her own poor choice) and it's really hard to root for any of them. There are some things people have to go through, mistakes they make, to learn from them- yes, I understand that.

But sometimes bad choices are so bad that, hear me out, you actually DON'T need to do them. Because your choices affect more than just yourself. And you are an intelligent human being who can see the logical, most likely, consequences and say- 'Yeah, I don't think I want that life. I guess I'll just pass on this.'

I am the first who is willing to suspend 'realism' for the sake of a story because every story needs conflict and character development, but this story was just too much. And honestly there was no character development that I saw. They were the same people before and after the bad choices and worse consequences. There was no growth.

And I know this is simplistic to say, but it's what I was thinking the whole time I read the book so I'll put it here for sake of sharing my observations. If these characters knew Jesus and desired to live a life pursuing His glory, literally all of these 'hard/bad' choices would be irrelevant and gone. Christians absolutely have hardships and tragedies in their lives- knowing Jesus doesn't equal perfect lives, but frankly, there are a lot of hardships that come as direct consequences to stupid choices and if you try to follow Christ, **chances are**, you aren't going to sleep with a drug-dealing coke addict you lawyered out of jail who won't get a job, takes all your money and puts your life in danger. *shrugs* Am I wrong?

In summation. This book did not interest me. It only evoked frustration, eye rolls, and silent beggings of 'No... just please... don't do that...' But that's just one man's opinion.