Beneath the Attic by V C Andrews (or Andrew Neiderman)

Image from GoodReads

*I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own*

I picked up my first book by V C Andrews when I was about 12. I believe it was one of the books in the "Landry" series. I was at my grandmother's house and I found it in her bedroom, and being from Louisiana, thought hey let's read this! Since then I've read just about all of the books that I could get my hands on. I will say that I stopped with probably the Orphans series, and haven't read too many since then. Looking back as an adult there's no way in hell I'd let my 12 year old read these, but hey... the early 2000s were a different time. 

Anyway, on to Beneath the Attic. This is another book in the Dollanganger series (Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind...etc). This particular book tells the story of the first Corrine, great grandmother to the kids left in the attic in the original story. In Andrews' books we never actually find out what happens to the first Corrine, just that she leaves her husband and her son to be with her lover. This betrayal is what spurns her son (Malcom) into being the God fearing woman hating character that he becomes later on in the series. At first I thought it would be interesting to find out what happened to Corrine, but while reading the book it was just a big cluster. First of all, in the series Garland is painted as a happy go lucky, friendly man; the opposite of his son. In this story however, it's almost as though he has a dark side, never mentioned in the original books, not to mention a weird fascination with his mother. (Isn't that a running theme in all of these books though?) I wasn't overly fond of the ending either, because it doesn't really tell us anything, just left a stupid cliffhanger that you can tell was only done so that the author can bank on another book. NOW FOR THE WORST PART. THE PART THAT SET MY INSIDES ON FIRE. My favorite book was mentioned in this one. Normally, I'd love a Gone With the Wind reference. However, THIS BOOK IS SET IN THE 1890s. GWTW wasn't published until 1936. So unless Corrine was a mind reader or time traveler, there's no way she would have known to compare herself to Scarlette O'Hara. 

Side note, the publication date of GWTW was easily found in a Google search, which was clearly more research than the ghostwriter did before putting all of this together. Reading this honestly just made me want to not read any of them ever again, because it was disappointing.