The Heavenstone Secrets

The Heavenstone Secrets
V.C. Andrews
438 pages
Publisher: Pocket
Source: Borders sale
★★★☆☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

This book sucked me in right away with its pure evil.  Cassie and Semantha have just learned that their mother is pregnant!  While it's a joyous time for everyone else, Cassie is angered by the news.  When tragedy befalls the household, Cassie takes over and forces Semantha into a roll that she is neither comfortable with, nor ready for.

Even though I knew just about everything that was going to happen before it happened, I was still drawn in by the intensity of the plot and the character of Cassie.  I knew whatever Cassie was going to say next was going to be deceitful but I still hung onto every word she said.  The only problem with Cassie was how redundant she was:  everything she said to Semantha was ended with the phrase, "We are Heavenstones, after all."  Cassie was a bit of a broken record by the end of the book.  An evil, deceitful, conniving, broken record.

Then there was the character of Semantha who was in every way the opposite of Cassie: quiet, reserved, and unsure of herself.  On the one hand, I feel terribly sorry for Semantha and all she had to put up with with her sister.  She was never allowed to be herself.  But on the other hand, Semantha is the naivest fourteen-year-old I've ever read about.  While there were times I wanted to give her a hug, more often there were times I wanted to scream at her and tell her to stand up to her sister and tell her father the truth.

Overall the book gets three stars from me, because I liked the plot and how the book wrapped up, but it lost stars for its predictability and repetitiveness.

There is a sequel, but this book stands totally on its own.  V.C. Andrews' novels are a unique breed and even though this was just published in 2010 (and thusly written by her estate and not actually by V.C. Andrews) I felt it kept the tradition alive and I recommend it if you're looking a book with purely evil character.
















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