Secrets in the Attic

Had I finished this book a couple of days sooner, I would have been the first to review something, which would have been a first. As it happens, my reviews are almost always the last ones posted, as it is extremely rare when I buy a new release. I wanted to read a new "V.C." novel one last time just to see how bad they had become...this is the worst book I have ever read.

Though Andrew Neiderman started off strong, with the Cutler and Landry series (with the exception of "Hidden Jewel", which felt rushed), the V.C. legacy was history with the advent of the "Runaways" series, though the names didn't start getting ridiculous (with the exception of "Butterfly") until "Cinnamon", "Rain" and "Ice". I wanted to scream, not every name has to be a noun!

And why didn't V.C.'s family get a woman to write in her place?

I think Mr. Ghostwriter finally just sold out when he ran out of ideas. I am sickened by all the glowing reviews for some of his later works (published in V.C.'s name to get sales) because they are so substandard, I would be ashamed to have my name attached to such trash. Like Nicholas Sparks, I guess once you write one good and/or popular book, it doesn't matter what kind of excrement you put out, people will keep turning back to it like a dog to its own vomit.

I know I am being harsh, and it sickens me that garbage like this is even published (but then, there was "Cancer Schmancer" by Fran Drescher, so go figure).

I knew this was rubbish with the first paragraph, but, I kept reading, just to finish it so I could trade it in and get my two bucks back in credit at the used bookstore to go towards something worthwhile.

"Secrets in the Attic" read like a first draft. The story was EXTREMELY rushed, the setting, Sandburg, obviously fake, had no attributes make it come alive, and as for the characters, I don't think Zipporah's (the heroine`s) hair color, or any other physical attribute, was even mentioned, so they didn't come alive either.

Though this book was set in 1962, the girls used the word "dork" and I just never got the feel for the setting, neither the place (which was somewhere in upstate New York) nor the time. In fact, the story seemed to have no time or place. And if Karen (the psycho) used the phrase, "Don't be thick" once more, I was going to hurl the book across the room.

The plot was a joke--I think hiding in the attic could have worked, if it had been done longer, if Karen had stayed hidden away for years, like in "The Diary of Anne Frank" (which is mentioned in the book) and then maybe when everyone dies off and Karen can finally come out of hiding, she finds that she has become comfortable in her captivity, or something like that.

I also didn't understand the sudden change of heart at the end, when the parents adopt Karen's child (who, even though the child is their granddaughter, they had wanted to abort, but then the Steins were Jewish, and Jews in general choose to see nothing wrong with terminating a pregnancy) instead of just giving the baby up for adoption, which would have been a whole lot better for the child than growing up knowing her mother was a murderous nutcase.

And I know this isn't the author's fault, but the cover was hideously ugly as well. I am of the belief that if a book has merit, the publishers will at least put it in an attractive package, which they did not, but hey, it had V.C.'s name on it, what else did they need?

I love V.C. Andrews, but this book was just the worst. The ghostwriter did absolutely no justice to her. By the second page I knew I wasn't reading her work. The plot itself was good, but the details given to bring it to life were few and far between. The writer did nothing to help you understand where the Karen character was coming from when it was finally revealed she was nothing but a sociopath. The ending was so abrupt I had to check to make sure I didn't skip any pages. What really got to me were all the inconsistencies in the story. Timelines did not unfold correctly; most notably the fact that the family was to take a trip on a saturday when, the tuesday before, the murder happens and by thursday the dad says he should call his mother to explain why they didn't make it on saturday, saturday hadn't even come and gone yet. Whoever proofread the book ought to be fired along with the ghostwriter. I was very dissappointed in this book, and am not sure I even want to read the next in this series.

This book was horrible. As a bibliophile, it pains me to say that, but it's the truth. I'm not a book snob, and I know how to appreciate a fun, fluffy read, but the writing in this book made it difficult to stomach. The previous reviewer was correct - the story lacked details, was dull, and really just plodded along. The ONLY reason I finished it was because I can't stand not to finish a book - I am always optimistic that it will somehow improve with the ending. This one did not.

I hate to be negative, but don't waste your time with this one. It's dull.

Secrets in the Attic tells a story from the point of view of the protagonist, Zipporah, about the hiding of her friend Karen in the attic and all the drama surrounding this event. Without giving away too much—in case you want to read this—events in the story unfold to where you question the veracity of Karen’s story, as well as who else might be involved.

That being said, when did Neiderman’s latest works even begin passing for writing? Does he have an editor reading over it before it goes to print? I knew V.C. Andrews herself had a tendency for purple prose, but at least it was couched in such a way that it was dramatic and appealing. Although this book is not hard to read, it took me months to get through it, largely because it rambled and just didn’t hold my attention. Page after page was filled with characters that didn’t inspire a great deal of interest or loyalty, and to illustrate Niederman’s penchant for poor descriptions, we have to endure awkward descriptions like these:

“It was supposed to be a collection of scary stories told around a campfire. Most of them were silly to me, but there was one that sprang to mind as if it had been written on springs.”

“I could see his anger bubbling in his eyes and around his mouth. It was as if his skin erupted with tiny volcanic explosions…..then he roared with such power I thought I was blown back into the wall.”

“At least to the public, he was a jovial man with a soft round face my mother said looked like a bowl of vanilla pudding with two plums for eyes, a walnut for a nose, and a banana for a mouth.”

The writing and the character development is so bad that you wonder if this isn’t just some inside tongue in cheek satirical joke by Neiderman. SPOILER ALERT. The character Karen can’t seem to do anything but compulsively lie and manipulate her way through any situation, every other sentence she’s telling someone they’re “thick”, and it’s questionable why Zipporah—who has allowed herself to be drawn in and used as an errand boy and an accomplice—even puts up with it all. Perhaps most frustratingly, none of the implied questions or plot points introduced in the beginning are answered or put to rest at the end—was Karen being molested by her stepfather, or was she just crazy? If she was molested, is the child her stepfather’s, or Jesse’s? Did Karen’s mother really know about any of it, or was she just another innocent victim of her daughter’s lying?

2/5 because I did wonder at times where the story was going, however the writing was so poor and the characterizations so flat reading it felt like a waste of time.

That says everything. Not again. I am tired, too, of hearing (or reading) complaints that the book did not follow the "old formula". Honestly, now, there is no "formula" to writing a book - it is not chemistry! That is part of the problem. When writing a novel gets routine, and the characters start to fall in to categories, then it is time to give up writing. Every novel should be new, fresh, with memorable characters. Anyway, I agree that this is a little too much. Mr. Neiderman writes a new book every four months or so. Four Months! I write (though I have never published anything) and my last manuscript took six years. Someone should tell him quality over quantity. Also he should stop calling a set of two books a series, it's called a duology. Here's the definition of that word: `Duology` also known as `dilogy` is a set of two works of art, usually a two-part series relating to literature or film, that develop a single theme over two works. A duology may or may not involve a sequel and/or prequel.
Found on [...]
Therefor if it has two books it is a duology.

1) this book really should be sold and cataloged in libraries as juvenile fiction. Not just because the main characters are two high school girls, but just for the subject matter, the writing itself, etc. This is not a story for adults!
2) it started out well, and kept my interest. I was actually taken back to high school (in the early 70s) and my friendship with one girl. We were also inseparable, like these two. And like the father said, we got older, life happened and I have no idea where she went. Then of course, the story changed.

Would a teen really keep that sort of secret from her lawyer father, a father she is very close to? I don't think so. Would she really hide the "evidence" like she did? I doubt it. That's where the story starts getting into "bad fiction" territory.

Now, the ending... this is a SPOILER...

While Zipporah and her brother are out on the front porch, their parents decide (without a word to the brother, without asking him what he wants) they will raise their grandchild. That mom will quit her job to do so.
This is what got me, dad saying to the son, "What are you going to do about it? Stop going to college? Get a job to pay for diapers and bottles?" YES< THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN! If this young man wants his baby, he is the one responsible, not his parents. They didn't even ask him if he wanted the baby, and there was no indication he did, in fact there was no way to tell how he felt, other than embarrassed at being caught. He was in college, Karen was 15. Did anyone even consider the girl's mother would press charges and he would be in jail, not in college?
Instead of any "learn your lesson here children," we get a girl who gets off free after misleading the police (oh, she bemoans her parents lack of trust, but I mean legally), a college student who gets a 15 year old girl pregnant, and his parents make it all okay for him.

Not an ounce of responsibility shown in this book in any way. When Zipporah decided to lie, she seemed to think that was the line between childhood and being an adult. She never did learn that the adult thing would have been to tell the truth. Children lie.

I have to agree with the majority - this story is a little over the top in stupidity. I was able to figure out the problems way ahead of the outcome. It was quite obvious that Karen Stoker was a mentally unstable individual and both Zipporah and her brother Jesse were kind of brain-dead themselves not to see it. The police were brutally clueless as not to investigate the attic which was known as the girls' secret "nest" as they gathered there on more than on occasion way before the basis of the story took place. It was all so ridiculous and very predictable. I had read "Flowers in the Attic" 20 years ago and was completely engulfed with the storytelling. Obviously, the ghostwriter series cannot hold a candle to the writer, V. C. Andrews.

OK, so I'm not sure why I even bought it knowing I have never enjoyed books from the "ghostwriter". However, maybe it was the marketing ploy of naming the book so closely to the REAL VC Andrews book "Flowers in the Attic" that got me. The book is readable, (Usually can't get through a BAD book) for entertainment and it was finishable to me. However, don't waste your $7.99. I'm still mourning the death of VC Andrews, because the new books always disappoint me.

See, this is much better. Fresh, but still with the well-known tropes. Murder and fugitive-harbouring mix with abusive men and manipulative women. And Karen Stoker is manipulative to the max! Which are exaggerations, and which are outright lies? Virgin-shaming, guilt-tripping...Karen does it all, and the Stein siblings are total doormats on which she treads. Surprising that Zipporah and Jesse aren't charged with anything, and Karen seems to have gone straight to a mental care facility rather than a prison. But I just don't understand why the Stein parents would adopt Karen's child. Yes, Jesse's the father, but shouldn't he take responsibility for being led by his wang rather than his brain? Shouldn't he suffer consequences? There's a sequel, and I'm guessing that's from Karen's child's perspective...

This is a book about a girls bestfriend who gets charged with a crime. Zipporah tries to help her friend Kim, and also figure out what really happened. Even is it risks her family. I loved this book, but I agree I would have preferd a happy ending, but how many VC books end happily? It had secrets, and good characters all doing their own thing. It was sexy in places, and has a hillarious Psycho copycat thing in it.

SPOILER.

All you guys bashing Zip would be terrible friends. OMG Zip is the kind of friend I would love to have. You support your friends and do everything you can to help them. Maybe not break the law, but I personally would have been like Zip. Zip did everything she could to believe in her friend. That's what friends do. Even if they give a crazy story you do your darndest to believe them. Zip wasn't dumb, she was trusting. She even doubted it and played detective herself.

Also at the end of the second or third book we learn that Kim isn't as bad as she seems at the end of this one. Turns out she most likely had very good reasons for what she did, and just distorted the truth.

I must be the only one, but I prefer the ghost writer. Yeah he wrote some crappy series, but he's wrote some better than Flowers. He gets alot of bashing for writing like VC did. Have you noticed that most of his books have touches of forbidden romances, and main characters who are ok, but make the most idiotic choices? What was Cathy? OMG. Cathy was beautiful, and had the whole world at her feet, and through it all away. Can you say married the wrong guy? Petals is my least favorite book of them all. I'm not sure, but I think the ghostwriter wrote all except that first series. And what was the first series? A book that kept us interested mostly to see if they would escape or fall to the forbidden romance. It had a awesome plot, but we didn't even figure it out until the end of book one. Well they pay the ghostwriter to copy that. Over half of his stories are excellent, and could be some of the best of all time, but he throws a bad ending on them to be like VC. His main characters makes a idiotic choice "Like Cathy", or gets raped, or falls in love with her brother. Maybe a family member dies, and she runs down the street in shock, then gets gang raped cause she lost. Everyone on this thread is bashing him for what he gets paid to do. He gets paid to write in the VC mold. Even if it screws up perfectly good stories, they want bad stuff to happen to honor her. They are rich and don't care that a terrible ending knocked them out of a masterpiece and number one bestseller. I agree he does copycat his own stories too much though, and a few really stunk. Orphans and another with short stories I think. Maybe he doesn't have enough depth to put out a book a year. IMO. This one, could have been a masterpiece except for the ending. I can't remember the names, but I think he wrote four series right after flowers that are excellent. Dawn, Cutlers, Willow, and another. I can't remember which but one was alot better the the Flowers series, and the other three were close.