Rating: 
Summary: Ghostwriter needs to give up the ghost
Review: It surprises me that so many people don't seem to know that VC Andrews passed away almost 20 years ago- that's why "her work" seems repetitive. The ghostwriter just continues to rework her themes in an attempt to stay "true" to her early works. Just a ploy for others to cash in on her name if you ask me. But I was desperate for a "beach read" and so picked this up. Celeste is a bit tired and slow, in my opinion. VC Andrews real work was gothic, which can often mean a bit overwrought as well as dark, and this was part of their charm. This is dark (maybe), but lacks the artistry, well drawn characters, and story development. I was a huge fan of the Dollanganger series and My Sweet Audrina. I've tried some of the ghost work, none seem interesting or compelling. Save your money, just reread the REAL VC Andrews!
Rating: 
Summary: A really messed up book
Review: Sunday, October 24, 2004 5:20 PM
All I gotta share about Celeste is: It's a really messed up book. The mother in the book claimed that she saw and spoke to her ancestors, and after Celeste's brother (Nobel) dies in a tragic accident ... her mother has Celeste take Noble's identity. That's up until a new boy (Elliot) moves in to the old man's house next door, and finds that Nobel (AKA Celeste) is really a girl when she was found masturbating in the woods. Elliot soon rapes her in another order of 'black mailing her' to the public. Elliot dies drowning the same (maybe the same) way Noble had died. Celeste later realized that there is something growing in her tummy, and then her mother is told (by Celeste) about every thing that happened in the woods, and the mother then makes clear to her that there is a baby growing inside of her. Months later, Celeste (AKA Noble) gives birth to a baby girl with red hair. The mother dyes her baby girl's hair blonde, and forbids Celeste (AKA Nobel) not to go NEAR the baby in two weeks. She was forced to stay down in the living room, watching TV and eating meals. Once when her mother was knocked out with exhaustion, she snuck upstairs to find the baby screaming in her mother's locked bedroom. She slowly takes the keys from her mother's apron, and walks SLOWLY up stairs, in to her mother's room, and sees her daughter for the first time ever, noticing that her mother had dyed her hair blonde, because it wasn't red anymore. She picks her up, and let her suck on one of her boobs for her to feed. The mother finds them like that, and puts the baby back in the crib where the baby girl slept. Celeste asks for her name. "Baby Celeste", is the answer the mother gave her.
Give me a break, you guys. If there was such a thing that REALLY happened like this --- someone would take that insane mother of hers and put her in a mental institution! That's really f**ked up! I can't wait to read the second book to this: Black Cat.
Rating: 
Summary: Different, yes, but still trash.
Review: The ghostwriter promised us that Celeste would be different from any Andrews novel he had written before - and it was. Worse than any other one, I might add. It's even more contrived and ridiculous than the Wildflowers or Broken Wings series. I found myself laughing the entire way through the book because it read like a third grader's story. The ghostwriter seemed so bent on stuffing every twisted cliche into his story that he lost touch with any sort of logic or reality in it. Celeste, is, of course, your standard spineless heroine - when you're not laughing, you'll be wondering why she can't ever stand up to her domineering and insane mother. Take her, throw in an obsession with peeing, some metaphors, crazy names, and a series of laughably unfortunate events, and you've got this latest drivel from our favorite ghostwriter. All that's missing is incest.
Rating: 
Summary: Classic
Review: This book was great I could not put it down! And yes this kinda stuff still happens! And if you are a fan of this author and her ghost writer you would know that this seems to have took place long ago the girls ask "Noble" if he listens to tapes "he" says no. Great book the review on the cover says it all her mom is right up there with the mom in flowers in the attic. I can't wait for the sequel and I have been reading VC Andrews for almost 20 years. I hope in the sequel Noble/Celeste stands up to her mother and gets her baby away from that loon!
Rating:
Summary: Finally - VCA took over the GW's body!!!!
Review: This book was the best I have read byt he GW as VCA... It brings back all those things I loved about the original VCA - intrigue, horror, questions, and caring about the story. Celeste is strong, not whiny, not wimpy, (...) as our beloved Cathy was prone to do in her younger, bolder, and most vengeful days. Sarah is a Mom you love to hate in true VCA stuyle - she's a sicko with the power of her children to completely run and change her children's lives! As a side note - did anybody notice that Elliott told Celeste the story of Dawn as a TV movie? Page 260-261. Great job AN!!! Keep it up, you have won me back!
Rating: 
Summary: Bizzare...
Review: This is by far one of the strangest VC andrews ever. Normaly, they are realistic fiction. ZThis one was SO fantasy. I mean really, seeing spirits? How stupid. And this one has too much detail. They should get straight to the point. I say Viriginias ghostwritter should be fired.
Rating:
Summary: what a sick mother
Review: this is the story of a loving family with twins, a boy and a girl. the mother hears the spirits of her dead relatives and refuses to let her children have any type of life outside of the home. no friends, they are homeschooled(double yuck here) and the silly father goes along with it.
but when the father dies, and a few years later her son dies, the mother really loses it. she forces her daughter celeste to take on the idenity of her brother and completely emerge herself as a boy.
now there are some interesting scenes on how a mother deals with a girl' puberty problems whens she is supposed to be a boy but this is just a sick book. the first 200 pages makes u think the mother really needs to be in a mental institution. hopefully all the parenets out there who refuse to let their children have normal lives and attend school will look at this story and think twice.
Rating:
Summary: Bomb Diggity
Review: This was a nice change from the previous senarios in the first few series. This book was a little to long, and could have been cut down. But it was still a thrilling story. I only hope that Celeste can get rid of her mother, and live happily with her daughter and a husband. We'll just have to read more and find out!
This is deffinately a good book to read!
Rating:
Summary: Iintriguing thriller
Review: Twins Noble and Celeste Atwell are part of a close knit family though their Mommy Sarah favors her son over her daughter. Mommy takes the children to purchase amulets to ward off evil over the concerns of her increasingly worried husband Arthur that Sarah is over the edge and their kids are suffering. Not long afterward, Arthur, a skeptic of mystic powers, dies from a cerebral aneurism. Mommy knows that the spirits took Arthur away because he failed to heed her advice about protection. Mommy becomes displeased and concerned when Celeste displays mystical prowess before Noble. At a nearby stream, Celeste and Noble push and pull with his fishing rod. When she lets go, he falls, cracks his head on a rock, and dies in the accident. Mommy is stunned that her "daughter" died as from now on Celeste is to be Noble and she is so convincing that the authorities believe the female twin died. Though a bit confused, Celeste's personality wanes over the years as with Mommy's impetus Noble takes over until adolescence sets in encouraged by Elliot moving next door. Though CELESTE is the author's usual theme of a dysfunctional family in which the suffering of the children from deranged adults surface in adolescence, C.V. Andrews provides an intriguing thriller. Still the initial reactions that Celeste could not pose as Noble and how did the authorities get fooled are overcome when one realizes how isolated the twins were and how Mommy believed that the girl died. Though Mommy seems out of the Bates Motel, Celeste as Noble and later as female yearnings surface makes for a fine tale that will excite fans of the author. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Not one of her better efforts...
Review: What do you get when you combine the best elements of the Dollanganger series, the Cutler series, and "My Sweet Audrina"? Amazingly, a very difficult read. While it is a switch from the "poor girl doesn't know she's rich" theme, it's very odd, and many of the ideas (other than Mommy trying to make her daughter over into a boy to replace her lost son) are not at all original. (In fact, one character describes a TV film that he watched some time before, and it sounds eerily like the plot of "Dawn".) My advice? Get hold of Andrews' earlier work. This is only for her most dedicated fans.
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