Danielle Steel brings us Antonia Adams who becomes the target of her parents' bitterness and hatred relishes the feeling of being invisible to the world. This is not an easy read like all her books, but if you love a hard hitting book you should give this book a try.

We follow Antonia as she goes through life being ignored by her parents making her reliant on herself. She learned to disappear, to hide in the shadows, to make herself so small and stay so silent that they forgot she was in the room. She had no living relatives, but seemed undaunted by her circumstances, and was certain that she would have a career as an actress one day. I needed a break from some of the heavier novels and Non-Fiction that I had been reading before this. She is very narcissistic and soon Brandon feels like he made a mistake marrying her because she hates being a wife and mother to their daughter Antonia.Brandon’s father had died in the Pacific during the war, and his mother had died when he was in college. When she is 7 and her mother walks out on them to be a big Hollywood star, her father becomes mean and distant to her because he sees his wife when he looks at her and cannot dispelled the rage he has for his wife. Talk about a disfunctional family, mom and dad were a total mess, and it is truly amazing that Antonia turned out so completely good and normal. I don’t like romances where there is such a huge age gap, especially when the woman is so young at the start of the relationship. During a summer job at a Hollywood studio, she meets a famous filmmaker, and is invisible no longer.

By the time she was seven, Antonia had perfected the art of seeming invisible, and feeling that way. Unprotected and unloved, she learns that the only way to feel safe is to hide from the dangers around her, drawing as little attention as possible to herself, to be “invisible. This file has been made available to me before publication in an early form for an honest professional review. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina's life and death; A Gift of Hope, a memoir of her work with the homeless; and the children's books Pretty Minnie in Paris and Pretty Minnie in Hollywood. Some mental health counselling prior to this point in the story would not have gone astray - but those are my personal feelings.He was from an old, respected family whose fortune had dwindled slowly over time, but there was still enough left for his widow and son to live in a decent neighborhood in a nice apartment in the East Eighties in New York, and for Brandon to get a good education at Columbia, and go to business school after that. Antonia made me feel so sorry for her because she often hid or disappeared because she felt like her mother flew into rages because she thought being a wife and mother was keeping her from becoming an actress.

Brandon spends more and more time away from their apartment working to avoid fighting with his wife. Danielle Steel has released over half a dozen releases in 2022 alone, which is a significant achievement for any author. Antonia looked nothing like her French mother, Fabienne Basquet, a fiery young woman with jet black hair, porcelain white skin, and lush lips, enhanced by bright red lipstick. She wasn’t shy at first, but became that way very quickly, living in the war zone between her parents. Can Antonia take the pressure of being placed at the centre of the action, or will she take the comfortable route and retreat once more?

Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world’s bestselling authors, with almost a billion copies of her novels sold. I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Delacorte Press for this privilege. Antonia deals with this as she always does, and puts her nose to the grindstone at home and at school and makes herself invisible by doing everything that is expected of her and not drawing attention to herself.