I really wanted to like this one. It sounded right up my alley: introvert Nina works in a cute indie bookstore and has a core group of friends she plays trivia with. They compete at bars on trivia nights, and Nina starts noticing Tom, a player on another team. After a few false starts, they start dating. But Nina also finds out she's named in the will of the father she never knew, and also has a bunch of relatives she's never met who aren't any too happy to have her taking a chunk out of the inheritance pie. Nina feels overwhelmed, like her life is spinning out of control. The story itself was all right, if not really contrived and totally predictable, but her tone killed me. It was entirely too cutesy (she described the neighborhood Nina lives in on page 2 as being "hella cute" and I knew I should have closed the book then and there. I was not wrong). Adults don't talk like that, unless they're being ironic. It made me feel old and out of touch and unhappy with my own pathetic life, which was the exact opposite of what I wanted. Where are the books about nice introvert girls who never end up with a man because all she meets are commitment phobic assholes? I'd read that.
Anyway. Moving on.
"Beneath the Attic" was atrociously awful. Just...ugh. Corrine Dixon is a 16 year old flirt who thinks she's wise beyond her years and can tangle with a grown man and come out ahead. Wrong. So very wrong. She meets Garland Foxworth at a party and they are instantly attracted to each other. Corrine visits an elderly relative who lives near Foxworth Hall and ends up being raped by Garland and falls pregnant (I'm not spoiling anything: it's on the dust jacket, not to mention it was totally predictable). The book ended on the eve of their rushed wedding.
Okay, let's break this down. As an avid reader of the original "Flowers in the Attic" series, anyone who has read and paid the *slightest* bit of attention to "Garden of Shadows" knows Garland was a NICE guy. MALCOLM was the jerk who was obsessed with his mother and liked to force himself on women. It was like the author (whoever is churning this trash out now, I don't think it's still Andrew Neiderman) was merging Malcolm and Garland into the same person. It would have been so much better to see how Garland was truly in love with Corrine and spoiled her and how she treated him like garbage and finally left him when Malcolm was five. You know, like how V.C. ANDREWS wrote it. I'm mad, in case you couldn't tell :) It's not like these books have been great lately, but still. Come on. This was just terrible.
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