Johnny Angel
A breathtaking story of loving and letting go, mixed blessings and second chances from the bestselling Danielle Steel
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
With a word or a smile, seventeen-year-old Johnny Peterson could light up a room, fill his mother’s heart with pride, and inspire the best in those around him. A star athlete and class valedictorian, tall, lanky Johnny had a future filled with promise–until he stepped into a car on prom night, dazzling in his rented tux, and in an instant, it was all taken away.
In the months that follow, Johnny’s family and high school sweetheart, Becky, struggle to put together the pieces of their shattered lives. No one is more devastated than Johnny’s mother, Alice, whose oldest son owned her heart from the day he was born. But amid the heartache, something miraculous is about to happen to the Peterson family, something that will alter the course of each of their lives.
Through a season of hope and healing, Johnny's presence will walk by his mother’s side, leaving miracles in his wake, leading his parents, his girlfriend, his sister, and his brother out of their grief. But as Alice is about to discover, Johnny has returned not just to help those he loves, but to uncover a purpose even he cannot comprehend–one that will change them all forever.
The breathtaking story of a mother’s love and a son’s gift, of the tragedy that nearly destroyed a family…and the miracle that saved them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the 1962 rock ballad, Johnny Angel isn't an angel, but an angelic young dreamboat. In Steel's book, the titular hero is both as well as class valedictorian, a football/track star, a faithful boyfriend and a college scholarship winner who holds down two jobs to help out his family; on top of it all, he has "great teeth." Killed in a car crash after his senior prom, 17-year-old Johnny Peterson is sent back to earth as an angel. His mission: to fix certain troubles left unresolved at the time of his death involving his girlfriend, Becky, her impoverished mother and his dysfunctional family. The plot may strike TV viewers as little more than a warmed-over Touched by an Angel rerun, but the theme the healing power of love is classic Steel. Unfortunately, the story is flawed by clunky characterizations. The sticking point isn't that Steel reveals her characters' problems through authorial proclamation rather than action and dialogue that bluntness is simply her style but that she explains those problems repeatedly. The first time readers learn that Johnny's dad drinks himself into a stupor every night from guilt over causing the accident that traumatized Johnny's brother, Bobby, into muteness, it is necessary information. The second repeat can be justified as emphasis. But multiple further repetitions are downright tedious. Still, Steele's heartfelt depiction of the central relationship between Johnny and his mother is touching, and few readers will get through the revelation of Johnny's final gift with dry eyes.
