This book is great. It is very addicting and when you pick it up and start reading you will not be able to put it down.

v.c. andrews books are all absolutely amazing and very easily distinguishable from any other authors. i love the darkeness, secrets, lies, very addicting, i have almost every single book!

I basically stick to reading VC Andrews like a "comfort food" for my brain. I liked her early stuff as do alot of fans I ask. I don't have a memorable moment or favorite series that's new. But, if u still want to continue, as I am, to read her to just be comforted by familarity then, by all means...Jordan March is the main character in this series and she hits puberty at a very young age. It is treated as an illness and things only get stranger from there.

Ok. So after being poked and prodded to add V.C. Andrews's stuff to my horror bibliography, I decided to see if it was really worthy or if my suspicions were correct that it really wasn't horror material .... the verdict is that it doesn't make the horror list. It's just a soap opera. Yes, there were a few pedophilic scenes that were certainly disturbing and sick, but there's a thin line between horror and just downright wrong, and this was not toeing it at all. It's just gross.....

And it wasn't even the main focus of the story. Frankly, this story has no ides what the fuck it wants to do. Is it about Jordan and her hormonal disorder? Is it about her controlling semi-abusive grandmother? Is it about Jordan's parents' marital problems? - nobody knows. It wants to be everything and nothing, and in the end we are just left with a bunch of useless whiny characters and a protagonist with less personality than a doll....

This was painful to get through. Albeit, the writing style was good but just because you write prettily doesn't mean you are good at stories.

My V.C. Andrews readers at the library told me I picked up the wrong one... that this was ghostwritten and that before I throw down the gavel I should read Flowers In The Attic....

I don't know how people sit through and enjoy this stuff.

I have been reading V.C Andrews for over 20 years. In fact, my first "adult" book I picked out when I was 11 years old was V.C Andrews' book Heaven, the first in the Casteel series. So, needless to say, my expectations were high, and my hopes were even higher.

Jordan March is your typical 6 year old girl, except she lives in a very large and beautiful mansion that is lorded over by her grandmother. Her mother, father, and brother, Ian, also live there along with her. Suddenly, Jordan's life turns upside down when at that young age she gets her first menstrual cycle. Her mother, in fear that her grandmother will think she is a freak, hides it from her while her father buries his head in a hole pretending it didn't happen. Her grandmother, however, soon finds out and takes over her medical treatment to help stunt the hormonal imbalance.

Shortly into the book, Jordan's mother finds out that her father has been having an affair with a woman and she calls for a divorce. Her grandmother, not having that in the slightest, goes to talk with her mother and she agrees after several veiled threats to end the divorce proceedings. During that time where her parents were supposedly patching things up, they are in a terrible car accident on their way home, finding out Jordan's brother, Ian, was molesting her.

No it doesn't get any happier.

After her parents are both taken to the hospital, her father paralyzed, her mother in a coma brain damaged, Jordan and Ian are sent back to the mansion with a nanny, who is a terrible and nasty woman further damaging poor Jordan in nightmarish ways that are reminiscent to old nun horror stories.

It still doesn't get any happier.

Ian, who I figured out to be a total sociopath, throws a hissy fit and poisons the nanny with strychnine while she sleeps therefore getting sent away to a home for the juvenile criminally insane.

That's about all I can say story wise without giving away where this book in the series ends. However, I'd like to add a few things before you think about reading this book; this book deals with child sexuality both with Jordan going through puberty and being molested by two different people, like with all of the V.C Andrews books there is no happy ending and probably never will be, and it's written by a ghost writer since the woman died, well, years ago.

I have read some critics getting in a tizzy over the child sexuality thing but a point to make here again is that all of her books have dealt with this before in some way or another. Maybe not so blatantly or so young, but it's been there. So, if you are a little faint of heart about this subject matter I don't recommend this author at all. Flowers in the Attic was a good example of this. Heads up, in the end of that particular series, Cathy marries her brother Chris and has children with him so I don't exactly see what the fuss is about here. If you can stomach that, you can stomach this.

I admit that Virginia Andrews books are one of my guilty pleasures. Ever since I read Flowers in the Attic when I was in my late teens I have loved them, and read every one since. Yes, there was a change after she died and the ghost writer took over but somehow I just felt I had to keep going.

This one seems in some ways to go back to the old stuff and I felt was less 'young adult' targeted than some of the others (particularly the Orphans series).

It had some dodgy moments. I didn't feel that the central character of Jordan was written as the 7 year old she was supposed to be and I don't feel that the issue of precocious puberty was dealt with as well as it could have been.

Still, a quick summer read with all the usual stock characters you would expect from 'her' books.

V. C. Andrews, or the ghostwriter who continued her legacy, has the most f***ed-up ideas in literature. Her stories are so bad, you love to read them. You might question your own sanity for reading them, but you'll still find yourself reading them.
On to Book#2.

Lovely! V.C Andrews is incredible as always. I have yet to read a novel by her that isn't good.

Could not finish. Subject is not handled appropriately.

It's trashy trash trash, but sometimes I need to read something that doesn't require any thinking. And this is a guilty pleasure for me.

This book was ok. VC Andrews has always been one of my favorite authors but I wonder if I am tiring of similar plots? I still have a bunch more books of hers to read. Maybe it was just this one.

Review by S.I.: "I just really like this book and everything about it. I'd recommend this book to my aunt."