I grew up with the original V. C. Andrews novels. My mother, grandmothers, and an aunt read The Dollanganger Family series in the 1980s. During my childhood, I remember everyone gathering together to watch the original Flowers in the Attic film adaptation on a rented VHS, and I also recall everyone being disappointed with it. In the early 2000s, my late grandmother stopped collecting V. C. Andrews books after learning Andrew Neiderman was the ghostwriter. Before inheriting her collection, I first read Flowers in the Attic after finding a hardback at a thrift store. And throughout the rest of the 2000s, I read all of V.C. Andrews's original writings, as well as many of Andrew Neiderman's ghostwritten installments.
Gallery Books released Whispering Hearts, the long-delayed third installment in the House of Secrets series by V. C. Andrews (or otherwise known as the ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman), in early November. Even though I've been disappointed (and critical) of Neiderman's recent outings, I still wanted to read Whispering Hearts, which serves as a prequel to House of Secrets and Echoes in the Walls.
Whispering Hearts centers on Emma Corey, aka the mother of Fern from previous books. Emma's story begins with her leaving her strict father's home in England and traveling to New York City to become a dancer. Her dreams of becoming a Broadway star quickly turns into tears. Nearly broke, she agrees to be a surrogate mother for Dr. Davenport and his wife, Samantha. They allow her to live with them at the Wyndemere House during the pregnancy. Sounds simple enough, right?
If you've already read House of Secrets and Echoes in the Walls, then you'll know what happens to Emma. And, no, she never becomes a Broadway dancer.
Well, at least Whispering Hearts is better written than the recent godawful (and unnecessary) Flowers in the Attic prequels. That's not saying much about the ghostwriter, Andrew Neiderman, because he has written many stinkers under the V. C. Andrews name over the last 10+ years.
Whispering Hearts works well as a prequel to the House of Secrets series, but that's if you've read them. If you're a casual reader, then you're going to it think it's dull and full of cliches. The plot of a young woman moving to the big city to become a dancer has been overdone in books and movies. So if you're looking for a fresh plot, then you're going to be disappointed.
The blurb states, "From V. C. Andrews comes unputdownable gothic novel of big city dreams gone wrong." Now there's nothing gothic about the book. Andrew Neiderman lost his gothic edge a long time ago, and "unputdownable" must be a hidden joke. The writing style is generic at best. It's more of a fluff bargain bin read than a gothic thriller. Nothing is thrilling about the story. It's just a melodrama with lots (and I mean lots) of cringy dialogue.
Overall, Whispering Hearts is neither good or bad. For me, it falls in the middle of the road. Yes, it's a step above the recent Flowers in the Attic prequels, but it lands nearly par with the House of Secrets and Echoes in the Walls. If you're one of the diehard V. C. Andrews loyalists who devours anything published under the late author's name, then you might enjoy Whispering Hearts. However, everyone else will see it either as a failed attempt by Andrew Neiderman or another cash grab by the publisher.
Warning: This article may contain spoilers.
Stargirl is a sci-fi superhero show produced by Geoff Johns. This somewhat campy and comical show has received mixed reviews throughout its first season. Here is a look at some of the best-reviewed and worst-reviewed episodes.
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| Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer! |
Did you meet your reading goals for 2020? How many books did you read?
There's nothing better to get you into the Christmas spirit than reading a holiday-themed novel. For me, I'm referring to the recently released The Noel Letters by New York Times bestselling author Richard Paul Evans. It's the fourth entry in his standalone Noel Collection series.
The novel centers on Noel Post, a New York publishing house editor who returns to her childhood home in Salt Lake City to visit her dying father. Unfortunately, by the time she arrives, her father has already passed away. On top of grieving about the nearly two decades of estrangement from her father, she's still struggling to get over her recent divorce. Plus, she's almost sure her editing job is long gone due to her negative attitude.
While cleaning off my desk, I stumbled upon Grant: The Complete Miniseries DVD, which Lionsgate Home Entertainment sent to me in October. As you can probably guess, I had forgotten about even having it. What can I say? I've been busy with non-blogging for the past two months, so I'm just now getting around to reviewing it.
Many weeks ago, I received the newest Ripley's Believe It or Not! annual, "Mind Blown!" And to be completely honest, I was surprised the 17th annual was released. If you aren't living under a rock, then you would know 2020 has been downright horrible with the pandemic, riots, lockdowns, and elections. So, it's impressive that Ripley Publishing was able to put together another edition full of new astonishing and weird facts from around the world.
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| Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer! |
There was a little family Christmas get-together last night. No presents were exchanged, though, between my mom and me, we put together gift bags for my much younger cousins. And I had to make my cousins rolled sugar cookies in the shape of Christmas Trees. The kids are crazy for cookies.
I've finished all of my Christmas shopping except for one thing that'll come out on Tuesday, so I'll have to go shopping on one of the busiest days of the year. That'll be fun!
Do you have any bookish ornaments on your Christmas tree?
With so many venues currently shut down, many entertainers have suddenly found themselves completely unable to do what they love or even earn a living. However, just because the spotlights are dark doesn’t mean there aren't other ways to bring your craft to the masses. Here are just a few ways to share your talent, and maybe pay a few bills in the process, without leaving your home.
Everyone's favorite ventriloquist's dummy is back in Goosebumps Slappyworld: My Friend Slappy by R.L. Stine. To be more precise, Scholastic released the book on October 6th, 2020, and due to unfortunate events, I am just now getting around to read to review it.
My Friend Slappy is the 12th installment of the newest incarnation of the Goosebumps franchise. Goosebumps SlappyWorld debuted in 2017 with Slappy as the narrator, and occasionally he plays the villain within whatever story he's telling. The main character in this tale is 6th grader Barton "Sluggs" Suggs. When he's not being bullied by his classmates Kelly and Travis, he's hanging out his only real friend, Lizzie Hellman. Well, that's until his father gives him a special present - a ventriloquist's dummy named Slappy!
Barton quickly learns that Slappy isn't your typical dummy, as he can walk and talk just like a human being, but there's a twist - Slappy is pure evil. Yep, that's right! At first, all Slappy wants to do is terrorize Barton, but he changes his mind once he learns the boy needs a best friend to show him how to get back at Kelly and Travis.
In the world of Goosebumps, the saying "Best Friend Forever" isn't a good thing, and poor Barton's new pal becomes a living nightmare for him.
I don't know about other Goosebumps readers, but I was starting to get a Slappy fatigue. Don't get me wrong, I love the character, but each new story involving a ventriloquist's dummy feels the same. A 12-year-old protagonist would either receive Slappy as a gift or somehow stumble upon Slappy by themself. Then Slappy comes to life and turns the kid's life upside down.
My Friend Slappy starts with the exact formula, but thanks to a few interesting twists, the story has a different outcome. Barton is the protagonist in this tale, and he's more fleshed out than typical your typical Goosebumps character would be. The poor kid has to deal with bullies and Slappy at the same time.
Overall, I enjoyed reading Goosebumps SlappyWorld: My Friend Slappy. It's one of the better entries in the Slappyworld series, but the "shocking" ending could have been better.
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| Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer! |
12/13/20 - I would have had this post pre-written last night, but sleep got in the way, so here I am working on it now. It's one of those mornings where my brain is awake, but my eyes aren't. My eyes have been a bit wacky for the last few days because of the weird weather. Lubricant eye drops and a humidifier both help to some degree.
I have some good news - I finished pulling out the carpets from my parent's house, or more specifically, I took everything out of an unorganized room, ripped up the carpet, and cleaned the floor. I moved back in the heavy desk, filing cabinet, an old sewing machine cabinet, and three bookshelves. I set up three plastic folding tables in a U-shaped pattern, which my mom is using for sewing, cutting, and ironing. Then I put together a 9-cube organizer bookcase, and I also installed a coax cable in the room for a small TV, which can now pick up local channels. FYI: I did all of this in one day.
For the first time in a long time, I got a little reading done. I read and reviewed two Amish eBooks, and yesterday I finished reading Goosebumps Slappyworld: My Friend Slappy by R.L. Stine. And I'm currently on page 130 in the Christmas tale The Noel Letters by Richard Paul Evans.
My next reads will be Whispering Hearts by V.C. Andrews, Weeks: Book 2 by Jasyn T. Turley, and Writers of the Future, Vol. 36, all of which I want to get read and reviewed before Christmas Day.
What was the last book you started to read but couldn't finish?
Who can Rebekah trust when the line between English and Amish becomes blurred?
An Amish Settlement. An English stranger. The Blizzard of 1888.
Rebekah's mother, Elnora Stoll, is the finest quilter in all of Gasthof Village but it seems Rebekah has inherited none of her skill. A sweet and gentle love blossoms between Rebekah Stoll and her childhood friend Joseph Graber, despite attempts by her saucy nemesis, Katie Knepp, to sway the young man's affections her way. When Joseph hints at the promise of forever, Rebekah is positive she should say yes to his proposal - until a mysterious English stranger shows up at her homestead and sets everything she thought she knew about her world on end.
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| Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer! |
2/4/20 - Yeah, it's been several weeks since my last Sunday Post. For the past month, I've been removing carpet from my parent's house. It all began with me helping my mom put up new curtains in a bedroom, which somehow lead to me pulling up the carpet. Surprisingly, there were finished hardware floors underneath.
Believing the floor was the same in the hallway, I went ahead and pulled up the carpet. The good news is the hallway has hardwood flooring. The bad news it's unfinished. I spent the majority of November removing staples and nails, filling/repairing holes, scrubbing/sanding, and staining the floors and the stairs.
Tomorrow (Saturday), I'll be removing carpet from an office/sewing room. I've already pulled up a corner, and the floor looks good. And there's no tack strips to remove. Taking out the carpet will be the easy part. Moving all the furniture is what's going to kill my back. Yes, I have a furniture dolly, but maneuvering things out of the rooms will be a challenge.
The keyword is "rooms."
My mom wants to switch her sewing/office room with the big spare bedroom. So I plan to move the mattress and box springs into another room, take apart the bedroom and move it out of the way. I'll lift the heavy desk onto the dolly and carefully roll it into the bedroom where the bed used to be. (FYI: A lot of my mom's sewing stuff has already been moved temporally to the bedroom closet.) Once I get the carpet pulled and the floors cleaned. Then I'll set up the bed and move in the chest of drawers and nightstand from the other room. And I've been informed I'll be putting up new curtains in that room. The bigger room does have carpet, which I've already removed room the closet. If everything goes as planned, I'll work on the floors in that room on Monday, which is going to be so much fun because I get to move the desk again!
Thanksgiving was the bare minimum. And, no, I'm not referring to the turkey, stuffing, and pecan pie. The only people there were my parents, my uncle, and myself. My grandma couldn't be there because she's at a nursing home. She's doing well, besides the fact that they moved her to a smaller room on the other side of the building. Why? Well, so they could shut off the heating to several wings to save money. The nursing home didn't inform us of the move. We found out from my grandma over the phone. They claimed the TV she had on the wall was there before she moved into her previous room, and they were refusing to move it. I bought the TV for her and made sure the maintenance man installed it when they switched her rooms last year. Let's say my mom was more than mad when she talked to them. I had kept the feet for the TV and dropped them off at the nursing home. Eventually, they did move the TV to my grandma's new room, which we haven't seen because they still don't allow visitors there because of the virus.
Speaking of the virus, my aunt (who's only six years older than me), her husband, and their three kids didn't come to Thanksgiving dinner because their oldest son tested positive for COVID-19. He caught it from his 6th-grade teacher, which I'm guessing there were other students infected, too. He quarantined for two weeks and had no symptoms. Even though he returned to school on Nov. 23rd, we all thought it was best not to gather for Thanksgiving.
The last I checked, I'm on chapter 7 in Goosebumps SlappyWorld: My Friend Slappy by R.L. Stine, which I'm hoping to finish over the weekend and get the review posted next week. Then I'll be reading Rebekah's Quilt and Rebekah's Dress by Sara Harris for an upcoming book tour on December 10th. No, I'm not waiting until the last minute to read these. I just received the review copies two days ago.
Also, I'll be reading the following books in no particular order The Noel Letters by Richard Paul Evans, Weeks: Book 2 by Jasyn T. Turley, Whispering Hearts by V.C. Andrews, and Writers of the Future, Volume 36. The latter is a book that I've had in my possession for many months and have never finished reading it. I'm determined to get it read and reviewed before Christmas.
Additionally, I received word from OverDrive that the book I had on hold, The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson, was available, so I checked it out. When am I going to read it? I don't have a clue, but it's there on my Kindle, if I have the time.
There are a lot of new books on my bookshelf. I picked up two new James Patterson titles - Deadly Cross and Three Women Disappear. I cannot explain this, but I bought Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline, despite the fact I never finished reading Ready Player One. Now I'm going to have to give the first book another go at it before reading the sequel. I found Fear Street: The Fire Game by R.L. Stine at a thrift store, which is one of the rare Fear Street titles not in my collection. At Dollar Tree, I picked up The Heart Forger by Rin Chupeco and The Killing Forest by Sara Bladel. I had ordered Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco because I couldn't find it in stores. Lastly, I bought the paperback The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis after watching the limited-series on Netflix.
Recent titles on Kindle are Star Trek: A Choice of Catastrophes by Steve Mollmann and Michael Schuster, Star Trek: DS9: Millennium by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Star Trek: Infiltrator by W. R. Thompson, Star Trek: Voyager: Endgame by Diane Carey, Star Trek: The Final Reflection by John M. Ford, Call the Midwife: Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth, Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare, Nobody Does It Better: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of James Bond by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis, Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade by Diana Gabaldon, Dune: The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, Star Trek: Voyager: The Farther Shore by Christie Golden, Star Trek: DS9: Unity by S. D. Perry, Star Trek: Crisis of Consciousness by Dave Galanter, Star Trek: TNG: The Light Fantastic by Jeffery Lang, and Star Trek: The Face of the Unknown by Christopher L. Bennett.
Yes, I also bought the Kindle version of The Queen's Gambit. After I had purchased the paperback, the eBook went on sale, so I got it. I probably won't have time to read it until after the holidays.
How many blogs do you own?
It seems it has been forever since my last Midnight Horror Review. As you can see by the post title, I am reviewing Tremors: Shrieker Island, which Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released to Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital on October 20, 2020. I received a digital screener before the film's release date, and I did watch it immediately, but I haven't had time to write the review until tonight.
Do you own an e-reader? If so, what is your favorite thing about it?
The Australian futuristic time-traveling fantasy 2067 landed on DVD and Blu-ray on November 17, 2020, from RLJE Films (part of AMC Networks). Directed by Seth Larney (Tombiruo), the 114-minute film stars Kodi Smit-McPhee (X-Men Apocalypse, Let Me In) and Ryan Kwanten (True Blood).
Set in 2067, Earth is infected by climate change, forcing humans to live on artificial oxygen. To make things worse, an illness is killing the world's population. After receiving a message from the future, the only hope for humanity is a tunnel worker Ethan Whyte (played by Kodi Smit-McPhee), and his adopted big-brother Jude Mathers (played by Ryan Kwantena), who must time travel to the year 2474 to search for the "cure."
Have you ever started reading a book and suddenly realized you've already read it?
I was channel surfing and came across the edited version of Fifty Shades of Grey starring Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, and to my shock, I learned the movie is already five years old. Wow. Where does the time go? It seems like yesterday the film was playing at my town's one-screen theater, and it caused a bit of commotion. Why? Well, the theater usually plays only PG or PG-13 films, so a Rated-R flick was a big deal for a small midwestern town.
What is your favorite social media and why?
When shopping for new window screens for your home, it’s not a one-size-fits-all scenario. In fact, it’s common to have different types of screens for each room of your home. Your living room, for instance, is considered a high-traffic area when pets, children, and house guests are factored in. The screen you need for this room differs for your bedroom or home office. So, how do you know which type is suitable for each room? We’ll run down five of the most important areas of any home with important factors to take into consideration. No matter which window screens you choose, they’ll need to be customed ordered to fit the specific dimensions of your window openings.
Have you ever participated in the NaNoWriMo? If yes, how did it go?
Romania—a hidden gem of Eastern Europe—is better known for its brush with communism than its cuisine. But, just because it’s hidden, doesn’t mean it’s forgotten. Filled with lush ingredients, many picked fresh from the field, you’ll find a traditional Romanian plate loaded to the brim with vegetables and lean proteins, never lacking in flavor.
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