HEAVEN is probably best when taken by itself. Yes, you do want to know if she gets to Boston and it was actually worth everything she had to go through from the night she found out about her real mother, but the deeper into a V.C. Andrews series you go, the more inconsistencies you find; at the same time, you feel like you're reading the same storylines and seeing the same names over and over, because, generally, you are.
HEAVEN is a good book for hooking you on V.C. Andrews and putting you at risk for finding this out. You're sucked right into the hellish existence of a blue-eyed, black-haired girl named Heaven Leigh Casteel, and marched outside with her and her Granny Casteel (ne้ Annie Brandywine) on the eve of her 10th birthday to learn the truth that will (just barely) see her through until she can actually get to Boston and meet her mother's family. Along with this truth comes a suitcase full of her mother's clothes and maybe the next best thing: a beautiful "portrait doll" that Granny says looks just like "Luke's Angel" did. What she looks like is Heaven with silvery-blonde hair instead of black--which she assumes is why her father hates her so much: her birth caused her mother's death, and seeing Casteel-black hair framing Angel's face reminds him that he shouldn't have brought a fragile Boston girl to the West Virginia hills nicknamed "The Willies," to live in a leaky cabin with an outside bathroom! Granny advises Heaven to keep the doll and the suitcase hidden, which Heaven does. It would never do for her stepmother Sarah to find it; Luke has never gotten over his angel although he married Sarah fairly quickly after Angel's death (guess why?) and makes no secret that he frequents the local....house-of-anything-but-angels.
The story takes up again when Heaven is 13. She describes her experiences of school and church attendance in the eloquently-named valley town of Winnerrow. Soon she and her brother Tom are meeting the new guy in school, and sister Fanny is throwing herself at him, much like her mother Sarah threw herself at Luke Casteel. It's a good thing this new guy--Logan Stonewall--has come into their lives, because his parents run the pharmacy and Logan can provide them with what are luxuries to them but necessities to everyone else. Between Logan and Miss Deale, Heaven and Tom's Baltimore-born teacher, for once life isn't bad.
For a short while.
Then hell is back in session, worse and worse and worse until Pa brings home the ultimate "worst" and calls it a Christmas gift. True, it's a way for Heaven to get out of the Willies and closer to Boston, but at what price (to her, that is)? A big one. A big HELLISH one, heavy on dialect and all-caps rants, and the dangers of being deprived of a daddy's love. Heaven is now at the (lack-of-) mercy of an affluent Candlewick (suburb of Atlanta) couple in which the wife makes most of the money and pretty much all of the drama. She has a house full of nice "thins" (including Royal DOULTON china, which she--or Andrews--calls Royal DALTON) but is not a nice person and considers Heaven just another "THIN." Hmm...to whom can these attitudes be traced? And how doomed is Heaven because of the attitudes and the person? (Yes, this woman does pronounce it "thin" or "thins.")
WEB OF DREAMS, the story of Heaven's mother, is also read-worthy, but it might go over better if you haven't already read HEAVEN. (The other books in the series are DARK ANGEL, FALLEN HEARTS, and GATES OF PARADISE. FALLEN HEARTS mentions Sarah but misspells her name; the principal from Heaven's school in Candlewick seems to have transferred to the Winnerrow school where Heaven teaches until her marriage. GATES OF PARADISE is told from the viewpoint of Heaven's beautiful daughter, whom she named after a Dear Departed.
Also recommended: THE GIRL, by Robbie Branscum: An 11-year-old girl who looks like her mother is sent, with her 4 siblings (2 older, 2 younger) to live with their paternal grandparents after their father's death. All through the book she is called, and referred to as, "the girl," even by her siblings. I wondered if maybe she had been named after her mother, for which her grandparents would definitely have made her life hell. The 3rd-person viewpoint is shared among the girl and her older brothers as they endure the share-cropper life while their grandmother spends the money meant for them on her own son, lecherous Uncle Les, who would rather spend his time with his parents or very young girls than with his pregnant wife.
BTW: Check out the Casteel family portrait. Isn't Conchata Ferrell, currently of "2 1/2 Men" starting to look like Sarah's twin?
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