Midnight Whispers (Cutler, #4) in V.C. Andrews

Feb 28, 2016 Leigh rated it really liked it

Shelves: pandemic-reads, mini-series-trilogies, family-saga, before-goodreads, audio, 2024, old-favourites, read-as-a-child-or-teen, 2020

Good Lord I thought Dawn was dumb in the first three books, but she's at her most stupid here and she doesn't even last 100 pages, again due to her own stupidity. As the formula of these books goes book four follows the daughter of our former main character except for Dollanganger cause Cathy had sons and they got book three instead. Maybe if VC Andrews had lived to write these herself the third book would've continued to be about the kids, but we'll never know. Christie is about to turn sixteen Good Lord I thought Dawn was dumb in the first three books, but she's at her most stupid here and she doesn't even last 100 pages, again due to her own stupidity. As the formula of these books goes book four follows the daughter of our former main character except for Dollanganger cause Cathy had sons and they got book three instead. Maybe if VC Andrews had lived to write these herself the third book would've continued to be about the kids, but we'll never know. Christie is about to turn sixteen and like most teenage girls she's excited for a party. Her mother runs the Cutler's Cove hotel now, her step dad Jimmy helps with the maintenance, and then we come to our first dumb move for Dawn, Phillip his stepford wife Betty (I hate that that bitch shares a name with my late mother) and their twins Melanie and Richard all live in the hotel too. Melanie and Richard I pictured as being like the twins from The Shining and the hotel setting was a nicely added touch. Phillip you may remember raped his sister Dawn in book one, continues to lust after her and also has made creepy advances on his niece so the fact that a now rich powerful Dawn let him and his creepy weird ass family continue to live there and associate with her is moronic, but it gets better. After a successful party, Christie her brother Jefferson, and the creepy twins are returning from school only to find the hotel in flames. A boiler blew up, Jimmy was trapped, Dawn went to rescue him not thinking of her two children being left orphan, idiot move number one. They both die in the fire which brings us to idiot move two, the dumbest thing ever, Dawn made Philip the guardian of her children. Not the man she thought of as a father all her life, not her stepfather who seems and turns out is a reasonable rational person, no the man who raped her and is now drooling over her daughter. Wow, you truly can't fix stupid. At first things are sad but not that bad, the Laura Sue, who either has dementia or is just completely bonkers, it's hard to tell, dies which pushes Phillip into a deeper crazy than he already is and of course he goes into Christie's room thinking she's Dawn and you can guess what happens. Christie and Jefferson runaway first to New York, then to the Meadows, where they find some happiness until Fern shows up. Fern is the token bad girl, there's Vera, Fanny, Clara Sue (until she got bumped off in the last book) Fern treats everyone horribly, Jefferson cuts himself on something rusty is rushed to the hospital which leads to Phillip coming to take them home again. So besides Dawn's utter stupidity it was a better book than the first three from my adult perspective. Christie shows some intelligence a lot more than her mother ever did. Of course her love interest is a step brother or step uncle? I can't figure out these weird family trees. Does anyone in these books fall in love with someone they didn't have a family relationship with. I mean Cathy and Chris was trauma from abuse, and being locked up for years, Troy and Heaven didn't know they were related, neither did Paul and Ruby, but seriously if I found out my brother wasn't really my brother I would never think, hey cool now we can get married! It's just so weird and I never quite realized how bad it was until I started rereading these. As soon as the ghostwriter took over it's like he felt he had to carry on with the incest theme not understanding the reasons the real VC Andrews had those themes in books she wrote herself. As an adult I notice these books seem a lot more shallow then the original books were, the ghostwriter was given a five book formula and he stuck pretty close to it. I can only imagine how great these books would've been had VC herself written them, I somehow doubt she would've carried on the sketchy incest theme and also would've had a better understanding of rape victims, because the scenes between Christie and Gavin just felt false to me. One more left in the Cutler series, it'll be interesting to see if it's any better. ...more

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