Secrets in the Attic by V.C. Andrews (ghost-written by Andrew Neiderman).
Title: Secrets in the Attic.
Author: V.C. Andrews (ghost-written by Andrew Neiderman).
Genre: Fiction, teen fiction, mystery, thriller.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2007.
Summary: In the dust and shadows of the attic, they shared everything -- fanciful stories, high school crushes, plans for the future, dreams to travel the world. For Karen, the attic is her escape from the reality of her stepfather's unwanted attention. Together in the eaves of a house with its own murderous history, the best friends concoct a scheme that will put Karen's stepfather in his place. It wasn't supposed to turn deadly. But in the attic Karen shares one more secret with her best friend -- a secret to take to the grave.
My rating: 6/10
♥ Ghosts and goblins, creatures from below or out of the darkness, were to be nothing more than movie and comic-book creations to make us scream with delight in the same way we might scream sitting on a roller coaster plunging through an illusion of disaster. Afterward we would gasp and hug each other in utter joy that we were still alive. Our excited eyes would look as if tiny diamonds floated around our pupils. Our feet would look as if we had springs in them when we walked, and all the adults in our families would cry for mercy and ask us to take our boundless energy outside so they could catch their breath.
That was the way it should have been, it could have been, but there was something dark and evil incubating just under the surface of the world in which we lived, in which I, especially, lived. I was in a protective rose-colored bubble, oblivious and happy, pirouetting like a ballerina on ice, unaware of the rumbling below and never dreaming that I could fall through into the freezing waters of sorrow and horror, the parents of our worst nightmares.
♥ Why, in our little town in the early sixties, even divorce was a rarity. Adultery was known only through whispers. The worst things teenagers did were still called pranks. A psychiatrist was as rare as an albino. Schools had guidance counselors mainly involved with scheduling classes and suggesting colleges rather than psychological counseling.
People didn't lock their front doors or their cars. Anyone who tried to make a living owning a home security company was on the verge of bankruptcy. Town policemen often held second jobs. Sophisticated detectives came only from the state. There were no radar traps. We could walk about unafraid on dark streets at night. Kids my age still hitchhiked and took rides with strangers. Smiles and invitations were still largely innocent and true.
When I tell my grandchildren today about that world, they think I'm fantasizing.
Maybe I am.
Maybe that's why we got into so much trouble. We were living in a fantasy and never really understood that we were.
♥ I was sure that from time to time, everyone thinks of himself or herself as weird. Keeping your sanity was truly like walking a tightrope. No matter what age, how successful, how happy you were, you could easily slip too far to the right or left and fall. Everything about us was so fragile. We spent most of our lives pretending we were too strong to be defeated by disappointments or disillusioned by anything that happened to us. It was like admitting we were mortal. Who would want to do that? Instead, we kept looking straight ahead and ignoring all that indicated we would get old, sicken, and die someday.
♥ Few of us get to know and understand the moment when our childhood ends and out adulhood begins. In childhood, all our feelings are simple and easy. Nothing is really very complicated. We want this; we can't have that. We love this person; we don't love or even like that one. We're excused from responsibilities or agree to our little chores. Our decisions are about things so trivial that later on, it makes us laugh at how much weight and importance we put on them. There is, after all, no greater dispensation, no excusing and forgiving coming from anything as much as from our youth. We are protected by the simple phrase, too young to know or appreciate the full extent of her actions.
♥ It occured to me that we get to know even the people we love in little ways over a long period of time. Just because someone is your father or your mother doesn't mean you know evertything about him or her. Everyone reveals things about himself or herself carefully, slowly, sometimes because he or she didn't remember these things until something sturred up the remembrance. Maybe we go through our whole lives and never really get to know the people we love or think we love.
♥ "We undress ourselves in many ways when we become close friends."
♥ Ghosts and goblins, creatures from below or out of the darkness, were to be nothing more than movie and comic-book creations to make us scream with delight in the same way we might scream sitting on a roller coaster plunging through an illusion of disaster. Afterward we would gasp and hug each other in utter joy that we were still alive. Our excited eyes would look as if tiny diamonds floated around our pupils. Our feet would look as if we had springs in them when we walked, and all the adults in our families would cry for mercy and ask us to take our boundless energy outside so they could catch their breath.
That was the way it should have been, it could have been, but there was something dark and evil incubating just under the surface of the world in which we lived, in which I, especially, lived. I was in a protective rose-colored bubble, oblivious and happy, pirouetting like a ballerina on ice, unaware of the rumbling below and never dreaming that I could fall through into the freezing waters of sorrow and horror, the parents of our worst nightmares.
♥ Why, in our little town in the early sixties, even divorce was a rarity. Adultery was known only through whispers. The worst things teenagers did were still called pranks. A psychiatrist was as rare as an albino. Schools had guidance counselors mainly involved with scheduling classes and suggesting colleges rather than psychological counseling.
People didn't lock their front doors or their cars. Anyone who tried to make a living owning a home security company was on the verge of bankruptcy. Town policemen often held second jobs. Sophisticated detectives came only from the state. There were no radar traps. We could walk about unafraid on dark streets at night. Kids my age still hitchhiked and took rides with strangers. Smiles and invitations were still largely innocent and true.
When I tell my grandchildren today about that world, they think I'm fantasizing.
Maybe I am.
Maybe that's why we got into so much trouble. We were living in a fantasy and never really understood that we were.
♥ I was sure that from time to time, everyone thinks of himself or herself as weird. Keeping your sanity was truly like walking a tightrope. No matter what age, how successful, how happy you were, you could easily slip too far to the right or left and fall. Everything about us was so fragile. We spent most of our lives pretending we were too strong to be defeated by disappointments or disillusioned by anything that happened to us. It was like admitting we were mortal. Who would want to do that? Instead, we kept looking straight ahead and ignoring all that indicated we would get old, sicken, and die someday.
♥ Few of us get to know and understand the moment when our childhood ends and out adulhood begins. In childhood, all our feelings are simple and easy. Nothing is really very complicated. We want this; we can't have that. We love this person; we don't love or even like that one. We're excused from responsibilities or agree to our little chores. Our decisions are about things so trivial that later on, it makes us laugh at how much weight and importance we put on them. There is, after all, no greater dispensation, no excusing and forgiving coming from anything as much as from our youth. We are protected by the simple phrase, too young to know or appreciate the full extent of her actions.
♥ It occured to me that we get to know even the people we love in little ways over a long period of time. Just because someone is your father or your mother doesn't mean you know evertything about him or her. Everyone reveals things about himself or herself carefully, slowly, sometimes because he or she didn't remember these things until something sturred up the remembrance. Maybe we go through our whole lives and never really get to know the people we love or think we love.
♥ "We undress ourselves in many ways when we become close friends."