THE KISS

Another morbid melodrama from Steel (Journey, 2000, etc.), this one featuring a lonely wife who finds love in the arms of another man.

Isabelle Forrester has stayed married to Gordon, her loathsome investment banker husband, for the sake of her children: selfish Sophie, now off to college, and Teddy, a frail 14-year-old afflicted with an unnamed degenerative disease that will probably kill him before he’s 20. Isabelle has been utterly devoted to Teddy, and he to her, since his premature birth. She hovers over him, sharing love and laughter and tender moments, even wheeling him out now and then to catch a ray of sunshine in her beautiful Paris garden. Bright-eyed Teddy (a Tiny Tim clone and model of winsome pathos in every way) keeps her happy. And of late, she has a confidant: powerful DC political consultant Bill Robinson. He shares Isabelle’s interest in art, and their transatlantic phone chats mean so very, very much to her. Since Bill is faithful to iceberg wife Cynthia and Isabelle doesn’t even mentally cheat on nasty, controlling Gordon, what harm could there be? When Bill invites Isabelle to spend a few days in London with him, she says yes. They visit the Tate Gallery, dance at Annabel’s, swap tearjerker stories—and then tragedy strikes! Their limo driver slams into a bus while he watches them kiss. Isabelle and Bill are pried out of the wreckage, gravely injured and comatose. Will Bill’s subsequent paralysis make him less of a man in Isabelle’s eyes? (No.) Once she recovers, will Gordon let her go? (Certainly not.) Will Cynthia divorce Bill? (Yes.) Will Teddy die nobly in a haze of golden light and platitudes and finally set his long-suffering mother free? Does a bear . . . read Danielle Steel novels?

The latest in a long, long line.