text: I have never been a fan of Danielle Steel's books and have only read a couple in my lifetime, and those many years ago.  I'm not sure what motivated me to pick up Toxic Bachelors -- extreme boredom? insanity? -- but I slogged through it last night and have to say that it confirmed all my bad impressions of this writer's work.  Actually, I think I was a little surprised by how awesomely bad it was.  The writing was completely repetitive and superficial, and I rather felt that I was reading a treatment for a novel rather than the novel itself.  It read like a poor book report:  "...and then he did this, and then he did this, and after that he did this, and then he laughed."  We are TOLD that the bachelors -- who struck me as commitment-phobic, a little neurotic, and fairly immature despite their (middle) age, but not necessarily toxic -- are decent, likable guys, but we never really see too much proof of that.  When the "proof" does come, it's so ham-handed as to be laughable:  Charlie's eyes well up with tears when he meets a young girl who was abused by her mother, and so we know that he truly does have a loving and compassionate soul and untold complexities to his character.  Yeahsurerightwhatever.  Most of the story is told through narration, with little bits and pieces of ho-hum dialogue.  The author adopted a third-person point of view, but there's certainly nothing omniscient about it, and the reader is never sucked into the head of one of these characters.  Throughout the book they remain about as interesting and dimensional as paper dolls, and their interactions with one another always struck me as being fairly unbelievable.  THIS is how men behave and relate to one another?  I find that hard to believe, considering that none of the men I know run around telling each other how much they love one another and how important they are to each other.  
  
  I liked the female characters of the book initially.  They all seemed to be strong, capable, independent and emotionally healthy women.  But my opinion of each diminished greatly toward the end of the book, as each woman seemed all too willing to disregard her personal boundaries and put up with extreme schmuckiness from her man.  And the conflicts Steel generated amongst the couples seemed ridiculous:  mountains out of molehills.  For instance, Gray, the 50-year-old artist who has always been phobic about family, refuses to meet the ADULT children of the woman he's been with for several months and whom he claims to love.  Nevermind the fact that he's known about the ADULT children since the very beginning.  Nevermind the fact that the ADULT children live in England and Italy, while Gray and Sylvia are New Yorkers.  Nevermind the fact that they have their own lives and are independent, self-sufficient ADULTS who maintain their relationship with their mother through frequent phone calls and less frequent face-to-face visits.  Evidently Gray can't see beyond the fact that they are "kids" and therefore "family" and therefore not to be tolerated.  Sorry, but whatever sympathy I'd developed for Gray by this point disappeared altogether when confronted by this monstrous display of immaturity.  Dump the weenie, Sylvia.  You can do better.  The other two guys had similar displays of gross ridiculousness, and of course everything was wrapped up magically, with sudden capitulation, as if the men had just suddenly come to their senses.  
  
  Considering what little time and effort was spent on these characters, their conflicts and resolution, I have to wonder why Steel even bothered writing this book.  And why I bothered reading i
  