Fine Things
Danielle Steel, 1987
★ 4.05 from 16.6k ratings on Goodreads
A man who builds a life of order and elegance discovers how quickly love can rearrange everything, in a story that moves from New York's fashion world to the beaches of Mexico. The story moves at a steady, old-fashioned pace, with warm domestic detail and a current of longing that keeps the sadness close.
Feels like longing, wonder and tenderness. About love, family and memory.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy family-centered love stories that wear their emotions openly and follow a decent, caring man through sudden changes. Some readers find the social details dated and the middle predictable, so it may suit you if you don't mind a slower, tear-focused read.
Why read it
It offers an open-hearted look at how love and family can upend a carefully ordered life, with enough tenderness to make the emotional passages land.
A page from the book
The guilt isn't in the argument; it's in the wanting to leave at all.
“Don’t be rude, Bernard.” She looked prim and he folded his napkin and pushed back his chair. Eating dinner with her always gave him stomach pains. “Where are you going? You haven’t been excused.” As though he were still five years old. He hated coming home sometimes. And then he felt guilty for hating it. And then he got mad at her for making him feel guilty for hating it. . . . What readers say
Readers often call this an emotional, tear-jerking story about a caring man and family bonds; many loved it and cried, while some found it dated, predictable, or tedious.
Danielle Steel.Danielle Steel has written over 180 novels and is one of the best-selling authors of all time; she often writes in a small office with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Books that feel like this
More by Danielle Steel
Daddy
Danielle Steel, 1989
A woman who once wanted to write gives her life to a marriage and children in the New York suburbs — and finds the bill coming due.
Zoya
Danielle Steel, 1988
From imperial ballrooms to exile, a Russian aristocrat learns what survival costs.
The House on Hope Street
Danielle Steel, 2000
A married law team fights a wealthy husband's hidden assets for a frightened client, while their own home life quietly sets the stakes.
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- Is Fine Things for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy family-centered love stories that wear their emotions openly and follow a decent, caring man through sudden changes. Some readers find the social details dated and the middle predictable, so it may suit you if you don't mind a slower, tear-focused read.
- What is Fine Things like?
- The story moves at a steady, old-fashioned pace, with warm domestic detail and a current of longing that keeps the sadness close. Feels like longing, wonder and tenderness. About love, family and memory.
- What should I read after Fine Things?
- If you liked Fine Things, try The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy), It Ends with Us (Colleen Hoover) and Intermezzo (Sally Rooney).
A taste of the feed
What a house becomes when no one has been living in it.
“It was raining when Rahel came back to Ayemenem. Slanting silver ropes slammed into loose earth, plowing it up like gunfire. The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hat. The walls, streaked with moss, had grown soft, and bulged a little with dampness that seeped up from the ground. The wild, overgrown garden was full of the whisper and scurry of small lives. In the undergrowth a rat snake rubbed itself against a glistening stone. Hopeful yellow bullfrogs cruised the scummy pond for mates. A drenched mongoose flashed across the leaf strewn driveway.
The God of Small Things · Arundhati Roy
Wanting to disappear completely, and to be loved completely, in the same breath.
Yes I would like he thinks to live in such a way that I could vanish into thin air at any time without affecting anyone and in fact I feel that for me this would constitute the perfect and perhaps the only acceptable life. At the same time I want desperately to be loved.
Intermezzo · Sally Rooney
Some love stories are made mostly of the time in between.
I fell in love with her when we were together, then fell deeper in love with her in the years we were apart. Our story has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. And although this is the way all stories unfold, I still can’t believe that ours didn’t go on forever.
Dear John · Nicholas Sparks
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed