3.0

I have liked the ending of last two Sidney Sheldon's books that I have read. But this one felt too cheesy and like one of those south Indian soaps!

I didn't hate reading it though! It was a page turner.

Sidney Sheldon's books served as my gateway into an adult world — teeming with power, money, ambition, betrayal, revenge, madness, greed, lust — themes which simultaneously captivated and repelled me. Despite their inclusion for cheap thrills, they formed the cornerstone of page-turning stories.

Master of the Game, an epic saga spanning three generations, remains etched in my mind. Its cartoonishly evil characters and their web of corruption have stayed with me. Though flawed, it embodies the essence of what a thriller should be, culminating in a conclusion where no one emerges unscathed.

Sheldon's exploration of success's price and the corrupting nature of power was simplistic enough to spark introspection in my teenage self. Master of the Game was a formative reading experience, so whenever someone asks me for a thriller recommendation, it is the first book that springs to mind as its ability to linger in my memory, with every horrifying detail still vivid, sets it apart from the rest.

This book. WTF! What a wild book. It’s a ridiculous soap opera drama, but I did feel like Sheldon got a bit lazy by the last generation of the family because everyone else had pretty clear motivations throughout and then they are just sort of born the way they are apparently. This is absolutely the definition of a beach read, enjoyable (sometimes in a “this is so bad” way) and fast.

"This is my favorite Sidney Sheldon book." I say, every time I finish a Sidney Sheldon book.

His books are so full of twists and turns and will leave you hanging every chapter. And what amazes me most is how he smoothly connects the events in his stories. Simply brilliant. I have no other words for him. Aaahhhh.

Ugh. Blech. What a book. Overall, I’m disgusted on principle, but let’s start with the quality of writing.
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Admittedly, it kept me engaged and turning pages. Probably simply because, while it was basically a string of episodic “scenes”, they were fast to read and just tense enough to want to know how each one ended.
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End of anything remotely positive about this book.
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Considering this was the story of one generation of a family to the next to the next to the next, it was strangely disjointed. It’s like Sheldon wanted to tell 3 different stories and decided to pack them between 2 covers and give none of them room to be good.
Exactly ZERO of the characters were even remotely likeable, even in the way of characters you love to hate.
The situations were contrived, the actions of the participants were recurringly incongruent, and the writing just plain embarrassing in parts.
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On to the most nauseating issue …
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The extreme objectification of women was one of the most insipid and horrifying I’ve seen in ages, if ever. The book was written in the ‘80s, which was not a time well-known for being particularly respectful of the fact that women are multilayered human beings, but this was … disturbing. Even though most of the book was written from a woman’s pov, Sheldon still managed to distill every female character into whore, angel, hag, shrew, manipulator, spinster, ball-buster, etc. And every one of them got her comeuppance in the end except the simpering beauty whose greatest desire was to be whatever her man wanted her to be.
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And let’s not even mention the woman who was twice brutally raped by a man that she not only kept hanging out with, but couldn’t help but be magnetically sexually attracted to. Because that’s real.
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I shudder for the society that not only published this author, but made his books best sellers without ever realizing how psychologically disgusting his feeling about women were. Puke puke puke.