Title: Rain.
Author: V.C. Andrews (ghost-written by Andrew Neiderman).
Genre: Fiction, pop fiction, mystery, family saga.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2000.
Summary: Growing up in the ghettos of Washington, D.C., the cards are stacked against a hard-working dreamer like Rain Arnold. Unlike her defiant younger sister, she avoids the dangers of the city streets as if her life depends on it...and it does. But Rain can't suppress the feeling that she is a stranger in her own world. Then one fateful night, Rain overhears something she shouldn't: a long-buried secret. In the blink of an eye, everything Rain has ever known is left behind, and Rain is sent to live with total strangers, the wealthy Hudson family. But just as she did not belong to the troubled world she was raised in, Rain is also out of place in this realm of privilege. With nowhere to turn, Rain finds an escape in the theater, inside the walls of an exclusive private school. But will it be enough to fulfill her heart's deepest wish and give her a place to call home?
My rating: 7/10
My Review:
♥ I didn't really listen to their conversation, but I heard bits and pieces about grandchildren and looking forward to the holidays. Without a family, there were no holidays, I thought. There was no Christmas, no presents to get or presents to give, no Thanksgiving to celebrate.
♥ Once you got speeding along recklessly and are excited by the adventure and the danger, it's hard to slow down and cruise with the careful, ordinary folks.
♥ I once heard it said that people could love each other without liking each other. It was as if love was something that came included with being born into a family. It was expected, part of who and what you were. Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, everyone was expected to love everyone, but when it came right down to it, personalities were so different and there were so many resentments floating around that liking each other was a real challenge sometimes.
♥ The clocks moved their hands, their ticks like drops of rain falling on our ears, reminding us that we could wish all we wanted, but we couldn't keep tomorrow away.
♥ Loneliness knew no boundaries after all. It doesn't care about the color of your skin or the numbers in your bank account. It just waits for its opportunity to crawl inside you and put a shadow over your heart.
♥ "It's always been my experience that when you make a man feel inferior, you close down his heart and you lose your feminine advantage."
♥ Lies, I thought again, are like termites weakening the foundation of your very soul.
♥ How I hated that expression: for now. It was simply another way to bury your head in the sand, I thought.