Lightningt Strikes by V.C. Andrews (ghost-written by Andrew Neiderman).
Title: Lightning Strikes.
Author: V.C. Andrews (ghost-written by Andrew Neiderman).
Genre: Fiction, Bildungsroman, mystery, teen.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2000.
Summary: Torn from the embrace of her poor but loving familyand having won over her grandmother, Rain finds peace in the world she was thrown into after her sister's death. Her love is acting, so her grandmother sends her to London to live with her great-aunt, Lenora, of the renowned Endfield family. The Endfield estate is breathtakingly austere, filled with antiques and a long, storied history, but something isn't right. Rain hears footsteps at night, and the high-pitched laughter of a little girl. And everything about the place - the air, the silence, even the somber household staff is cold and soulless. Behind the icy sheen of wealth and privilege lies something unspeakable.
My rating: 6/10.
My review:
♥ She enjoyed so little in the way of pleasure from her children and grandchildren. It made me reconsider what it means to be rich and to be poor.
♥ He had a quiet confidence like someone who knew important things and just stood in the background waiting for you to catch up.
♥ But a girl my age needed more than just a sense of security, I thought. I needed to cling to love as well as strength. There were other emotions to explore, other feeling to have travel over the wires that ran back to my heart. I wanted laughter to sound like music; I wanted every smile to brighten the day even more; and I wanted words to find comfortable place in which to settle and plant the seeds of memories that would grow forever and ever until I was too old to remember or too old to care.
♥ Love, after all, wasn't something to be commanded or demanded. It came from that special place inside our hearts, blossoming like a flower properly nurtured. Real love took time.
♥ Truth was as powerful and as insistent as water. It would seep in every small opening, and every attempt to plug up the holes in their hearts would fail, for another hole would simply form until all these castle walls would crumble and the truth would flood and wash away the false faces. There wasn't a false face in the world that could successfully hide what the false heart did know. Reading Shakespeare had taught me that.
♥ ...a little girl's relationship with her father was so special. Only briefly glancing at this little girl's contented face, I knew that in her putaway heart of hearts, she had faith that her daddy could drive away demons, could smash nightmares with a growl, could lift her above any danger, keep her out of any fire or flood and help her defeat any pain. She'd wrap his power around herself like some suit of armor and never be afraid of the dark.
Perhaps the most delicious moments of her life would come much later when she was a young lady searching for a man to love her as much as her daddy did. Even when she found such a person, she would turn to her father to feel secure in her decision and when she looked at him, she would see that he saw her forever and ever as his little girl. Not a mountain of days, not a million ticks of the clock, not a string of birthdays could change it, and even if she would get him to say that she was no longer a baby, she would see a smile behind that agreement that said, "However, you'll always be my baby."
♥ "It's all so beautiful."
"We have so much opportunity to bring beauty into the world if we just have the patience to nurture it," she told me.
♥ I watched him go, imagining that someday he would be a singing star. I wouldn't be beside him, but years and years from now, we might meet and smile and only for a brief moment, remember. For now, we were more like two comets passing close enough to linger in each other's magnetic fields for a few seconds of eternity before moving on toward other worlds, other suns, other destinies.