Helpful Score: 1
Moral Compass by Danielle Steel is different from the authors other novels. It delves into the serious topic of teenage drinking and a female being assaulted. Saint Ambrose Preparatory School is admitting female students for the first time in its history. Taylor Houghton IV, the headmaster, knows that his career is on the line so this venture must be a success. There are no problems until Halloween arrives and some students decide to bring out alcohol they have sneaked onto campus. Campus security receive a late night anonymous call that has them finding a female student unconscious. She must have her stomach pumped from the vast quantities of alcohol consumed and a SAFE exam performed. The book follows the investigation along with the trial and its outcome. We see the consequences of making the decision to overindulge in alcohol and how it affects others. I thought the story was well-written and it proceeded at a steady pace. I like how the author dealt with the such terrible and relevant topic of violence against a young woman. Moral Compass is a timely novel (what people call âripped from the headlinesâ) that hopefully will allow people to see that the victim should not be blamed when they are assaulted. The victim is not on trial nor should they be. Moral Compass allows readers to see this sensitive issue dealt with from various points-of-view. Moral Compass is a compelling story whose title truly fits.
Helpful Score: 1
First let me say, I've read Danielle Steel books since the mid 70's and loved them. Very few left me disappointed. However, that was not the case with MORAL COMPASS. This book had so much potential. It was timely and could have been great but it fell boringly short. The characters were flat and the story was dull. There was no build up, no suspense, no feelings at all.
The facts were pretty much done as an info dump in the first three chapters and it only got worse as it went on. I never empathised with any of the characters at any point in the story. They were dull as cardboard cutouts. If this book had been written by anyone other than Steel, I'd have quit by page 50 but I did read the whole thing as I kept expecting it to take off and actually entertain me. Possibly, if this had been a mystery type of book, it would have been better but it read basically as going from point A to B to C and not only did you not care about point A, B or C , you didn't care about the journey. I don't think I've ever been so relieved to get to the end of a story. I'm not sure that this story actually deserved two stars instead of one, but out of sentimentality for DS, I gave it two.
The facts were pretty much done as an info dump in the first three chapters and it only got worse as it went on. I never empathised with any of the characters at any point in the story. They were dull as cardboard cutouts. If this book had been written by anyone other than Steel, I'd have quit by page 50 but I did read the whole thing as I kept expecting it to take off and actually entertain me. Possibly, if this had been a mystery type of book, it would have been better but it read basically as going from point A to B to C and not only did you not care about point A, B or C , you didn't care about the journey. I don't think I've ever been so relieved to get to the end of a story. I'm not sure that this story actually deserved two stars instead of one, but out of sentimentality for DS, I gave it two.
