Angel

Barbara Taylor Bradford

As I started reading this novel, I had that feeling of deja vu. I know I read it before, probably about 4 to 5 years ago. But as I read it again, I could not remember what was going to happen until it did.

Rosie, her brother Kevin, Nell, and Gavin have been friends since they were orphaned teens. Now in their early 30's, they have successful careers, unsuccessful private lives.

Rosie, a costume designer, has an adopted family in France she cares for. Gavin, the famous actor and producer, has an absent wife and a son. Kevin is a deep undercover cop for New York Police whose love of his life is permanently hospitalized as a drug overdose vegetable. Nell runs a successful accounting business, and is the backer for many famous people including Gavin and a singer, Johnny Fortune.

This novel centers on Rosie as she disentangles from current relationship problems and starts new ones, yet all the characters are the focus at one time or another. Johnny is the nephew of a famous Mafia don that Kevin is investigating (although neither knows of the other). Johnny falls in love with Rosie. Kevin has started rebuilding his personal life and has fallen in love with Nell. Gavin is waiting for his wife to finally leave him.

This novel was all right (faint praise, isn't that called?). It picks up in the middle of a story and ends there, too. Sunny (Kevins' youthful love) has already destroyed herself with drugs, but is still a central figure of the book. Mike, another friend, disappeared before the story started, and has not returned by the end. Another romance is resolved in the middle of the book that could have been a novel on its own. But too many story lines are picked up, dropped, never resolved, or hurried. For example, we knew something would happen to Kevin while working undercover, yet when it did, we never found out how or why, just what.