Wanderlust

Wanderlust
Danielle Steel
506 pages
Publisher: Dell
Source: Paperbackswap.com
★★★☆☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

This was my first Danielle Steel, which I picked up because I'm doing a challenge and I need to read a bestseller from the year I was born.  There wasn't much to choose from that sounded good from 1986, so thus... Wanderlust.  Some people have called this Steel's best novel.

Audrey Driscoll grew up privileged under the care of her grandfather and caring for her younger sister.  The book opens as her sister gets married and Audrey can no longer fight her urge to travel.  She travels to Europe, falls in love, and had adventures, all while World War II is starting in Europe.

What I liked about this book was that it went beyond other romance novels.  The characters were more plentiful.  The main romance interests had lives outside of each other.  The book took place during World War II and Steel used a lot of that in the plot, much more than other romance novelists might have deemed necessary, but it was nice to read chapters about real life between the romance, if you know what I mean.  Basically, this book was just so much more than a typical mass market romance one might pick up today in a book store, and for that I was grateful.  I also liked that the plot moved at a good clip and there wasn't much wallowing.

This book is definitely worth a look if you're into romances.