WOMAN'S PLACE

Rating:
Summary: Successful Business Woman's Worst Nightmare
Review: I love this book because the writing is excellent but the story is one of the most compelling I've ever read. Delinsky made me care about the characters, to the point where I wanted to cry, laugh and scream at times. I can honestly say I hated being interupted when reading it and couldn't wait to get back into it. I think this is the best Delinsky book I've read thus far.

Rating:
Summary: Successful Business Woman's Worst Nightmare
Review: I love this book because the writing is excellent but the story is one of the most compelling I've ever read. Delinsky made me care about the characters, to the point where I wanted to cry, laugh and scream at times. I can honestly say I hated being interupted when reading it and couldn't wait to get back into it. I think this is the best Delinsky book I've read thus far.

Rating:
Summary: surprised
Review: It seems like everyone here enjoyed this novel, but I found it horrible! It was so boring. Unfortunately, it was the only book I had with me at the time so I tried to read about 4 chapters of it and it was painful. That was the last Delinsky novel I ever picked up.

Rating:
Summary: I Loved the Book
Review: The book begins with a glossy 8x10 picture of life. Claire has her family, her children, her marriage and her career and, then
everything falls apart. She is booted out of her home, her husband wants a divorce and she looses custody of her children who were her life.
Barbara Delinsky identifies each character in such a way a reader cannot but feel like he/she really knows each person. I had feelings for each character and felt sorry, happy,angry and even love for each of the characters at one time or another during the story.
In the end, each character finds his or her strengths and understandings of the situation they were in and become emotionally healthy again. Scars are left in everyone's life but pain does not stop life from going on.
I highly recommend the book for anyone who likes love stories, stories about life's struggles and triumps or books about surviving life's tragic surprises.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully compelling and powerful
Review: The book was not at all trite nor the characters stereotypical. Especially liked the way Dennis went from irritated and shallow father to a flesh and blood, worried, real Daddy after taking day and night responsibility for his children. Claire thought (as most mothers might admit to) that when he actually tried full-time parenting he would throw up his hands and give up custody of the kids on his own. Instead he grew in character and everyone, especially the children, were better for it.

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as "Three Wishes"
Review: This novel is about the trials and tribulations of a woman who is being divorced by her ex-husband.

Central character Claire Raphael seems pretty passive and simply stands by while her husband takes custody of her kids and takes her to the cleaners because she has her own business and earns more money than the ex-husband.

There needed to be more conflict and drama. Maybe, Claire could have kidnapped the children or taken revenge on her ex, for the sake of plot suspense and momentum. Instead, poor Claire waits for the legal system to dole out what little she does end up with.

Also, Claire has to deal with her aging and dying mother, Connie. Why do characters in Barbara Delinsky books call their mothers by their first names always?

Coming off the surreal and mystical "Three Wishes" by Barbara Delinsky, "A Woman's Place" was a let-down, due to the central character's (In "Woman's Place") inability to take action, no matter what it was, regarding her sad situation.

The book just plods along while central character, Claire waits for her situation to change. This novel comes closest to repetitive Danielle Steel novels, since much of "A Woman's Place" is taken up by Claire doing nothing but endlessly and incessantly complaining about her lot in life instead of pro-actively doing something about it.