Country by Danielle Steel

              I have been extremely restless lately.  My attention span can already be on the short side, but for some reason now it is even shorter.  Blame it on the time or year, or maybe it’s simply a desire for something new, but reading is the only thing that keeps me somewhat settled.  Even reading isn’t fully successful at doing that, though.  I keep finding myself losing patience with what I am reading and then skim ahead.  This happens even with books I like, like Danielle Steel’s Country.  The difference with Country is that even though I skipped ahead, I went back to read the book fully.  It is definitely a book to read in its entirety.   

                Stephanie Adams has unexpectedly found herself a widow.  Her husband died while on a ski trip, and with him gone, Stephanie doesn’t know what to do with herself.  Her children are all out of the house, living their own lives.  She doesn’t have a job because her husband never wanted her to have one.  Plus her marriage was technically over for years, so she doesn’t even know how to mourn for the man.  To make matters worse, her children are taking out their anger about their father’s death on Stephanie.  They keep going on and on about how he was such a great father and she was a terrible mother, which is completely untrue.  In reality, the children had a father who worked all the time and didn’t want anything to do with his kids.  He didn’t want much to do with his wife either.  At one point he cheated on Stephanie, but the children don’t know this because, as with all his other bad deeds, Stephanie covered for him.  It is because of Stephanie these children never knew what kind of man their father truly was.   

Upset with her life, Stephanie accidently takes a wrong turn while returning home from a trip she took with some friends.  Not having anything to go home to, Stephanie decides not to correct her course, and ends up in Las Vegas.  From there she goes to the Grand Canyon where she meets, unbeknownst to her, country star Chase Taylor.  Instantly they have a connection, and on a whim Stephanie goes with Chase back to Nashville.  It is the wildest thing she has ever done in her life, but she does not regret if for a minute.  The trip makes Stephanie feel free and alive, even though she has to hide her growing romance with Chase from her children.  While she does not like keeping secrets from her children, Stephanie feels it is worth it because of the love she is feeling for Chase and the love he is giving her in return.      

                Unfortunately, despite their love for each other, there are a lot of problems for Stephanie and Chase to overcome.  First is the fact that they live on opposite sides of the country.  Then there are the monsters that Stephanie calls her children.  Two of her three kids act like absolute terrors when they find out about their mother’s relationship with Chase.  They have never met the man, but immediately they tear into him as well as accuse Stephanie of being unfaithful to their dead father.  There are other things they say to and call their mother which I will not repeat, but I’m sure you can imagine what they are.

                Her children’s behavior leads into the final problem which is Stephanie herself.  While being a wife and mother she completely lost her identity.  Now with her husband gone, she has to figure out who she is again.  This is not easy when her children and friends want her to remain as she was.  Nor is it easy because Chase is ready for a relationship with her now.  Fortunately for Stephanie, Chase understands about Stephanie having to find her own identity, but she does not know how long it may take and she worries that it may mean losing Chase in the process.        

                Even though I liked this book, there were a lot of moments where I wanted to throw it across the room in frustration.  Mostly this happened when Stephanie’s kids were going at her.  I so badly wanted for Stephanie to smack her kids with the truth about their father.  Let everything out and no longer cover for the man.  Sadly, this did not happen.  Some of the truth did eventually come out, but not the way I wanted it to.  That would have been a great scene if it had.               

                Other times I grew frustrated were when one of Stephanie’s good friends harassed her about moving on with her life.  For some reason the friend thought Stephanie should be in mourning, probably for the rest of her life, instead of finding someone who would truly love her.  How that woman thought she was being a friend, I have no idea.

                Then there were the scenes with the boyfriend of Chase’s ward, Sandy.  He was a real creep and treated Sandy badly.  That behavior was bad enough, but the fact that Chase didn’t really do anything about it also irked me.  I understand Sandy was an adult, and he had faith it would all work out for the best, but it would have been nice for Chase to confront the guy about his behavior at least once.  They did work together after all.  There were a lot of times where Chase could have said something, even using the benefit of the work environment as a cover, but he didn’t.  That I found to be very disappointing.  Maybe if Chase had said something sooner, Sandy would have woken up earlier and not stayed with her boyfriend as long as she did.      

                With all that I have said so far, it probably sounds like I did not like the book, but I did!  The relationship between Stephanie and Chase was really sweet and I enjoyed reading it.  Chase was the kind of man Stephanie needed.  He was a good man who cared about others.  Stephanie was the type of woman Chase needed.  She did not care about his career.  What she cared about was who Chase was as a person.  They also took their relationship slowly, which I was happy to read.  There weren’t any huge sex scenes or torrid passion.  Instead it was a relationship that grew naturally with two people truly getting to know each other before becoming anything other than friends.

                I also loved reading the scenes with Stephanie’s friend, Jean.  She was really funny and a great support for Stephanie when she needed it.  When Jean found out about Chase, she was behind the couple from the start.  She would have liked things to move faster than they did, but she loved the fact that Stephanie had moved on to a man that was worthy of her.

                Sandy, when she wasn’t with her boyfriend, was also a great character.  Stephanie’s son didn’t end up being too bad either.  So while there were things that bothered me with this book, there was a lot that I enjoyed too.  In the end, the good definitely outweighed the bad.  If it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have kept reading.  I would have stopped with my skimming.  Instead I went back and read from where I left off.  It’s not something I had to do, but I’m certainly glad I did.