Review: The Santangelos by Jackie Collins

Posted August 30, 2015 by Cocktails and Books in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review:  The Santangelos by Jackie CollinsThe Santangelos by Jackie Collins
Series: Lucky Santangelo #10
Published by St. Martin's Press Publication Date: June 16th 2015
Pages: 544
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Find on: Goodreads
three-half-stars

Legendary mega-seller Jackie Collins chronicles passion and power in one of America's most glamorous families.A vicious hit. A vengeful enemy. A drug addled Colombian club owner. A sex crazed Italian family. And the ever powerful Lucky Santangelo has to deal with them all, while Max-her teenage daughter is becoming The "It" girl in Europe's modeling world. And her Kennedyesque son, Bobby, is being set up for a murder he didn't commit. But Lucky can deal. Always strong and unpredictable with her husband, Lennie, by her side she lives up to the family motto-Never cross a Santangelo.
Lucky rules. The Santangelos always come out on top. An epic family saga filled with love, lust, revenge and passion.

I can’t believe I read my first Lucky Santangelo book back in 1982, 33 years and 10 books later I am now reviewing the most recent book.  I have not read all 10 – I think I stopped around book 4 but it was not hard to pick up from where the series left off.

As per usual there is a lot of soap opera drama between Lucky, Lennie their children and the most recent threat against the family.  The books is classic Jackie Collins – a lot of characters intertwined with each other and all having some impact on each others lives. Lucky and Lennie’s oldest children are featured heavily in this story along with familiar faces from the past.  There is a big take down at the end of the book and of course Lucky saves the family.

I was impressed with all the current references Jackie Collins makes throughout the book, Uber, Google, Smartphones etc – she is definitely keeping up on current trends.  I appreciate that.  What I had a hard time with is how repetitive the narration was – things were repeated over and over throughout the book and that does wear thin after a while.  It can be difficult reading a book like this with so many characters – while I think overall the characters were identified and their personalities came through if you like certain characters more than others you don’t get to spend a lot of time with them and with the people you don’t like I have a tendency to try to get through that part as quickly as possible to read more about who I do like.  I would love to see Jackie Collins do a spin off set of books concentrating more on the kids – maybe give one of them their own book to explore more of their lives.  Especially Max and Bobby, both are left in very interesting places in their lives and would love to explore more about them.   At the end of the day this is Lucky’s book and the supporting cast help support her story in some capacity some more obvious than others but its definitely her book.

Overall if you have been a Jackie Collins fan in the past then this book follows her same formula.  If you have never read a Jackie Collins novel I would recommend to start with the first book Chances – it’s the best of what I have read in the past and well worth it.

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