epiphany_maria (epiphany_maria) wrote,
epiphany_maria
epiphany_maria

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Book Review: My Sweet Audrina

My Sweet Audrina by Virginia Andrews
I’m re-reading this 1983 potboiler to get ready for the ghost-written sequel ‘Whitefern’ this summer. This southern gothic centres on Audrina, a girl with no memories and a dead sister she is ordered to emulate. Her mother is a doormat, her aunt is a shrew, her cousin/sister Vera is her tormentor and she has an inexplicable fondness for her crazy abusive father who speaks in a high moral tone and claims to have moral truth but instead is the source of iniquity.

Time passes, Audrina falls in love with Arden Lowe and his warm gruffness only to realise too late how very negative he is. Truth, lies and horrible dark secrets must be revealed to free Audrina from her isolation and force her to finally take responsibility for her own happiness. If that is even possible.

Everything happens with bold theatrical effect adroitly encapsulating all the engrossing camp of the real works of Virginia Andrews before her early death and the arrival of the ghost-writer. Andrews focused on those driven outside the social order and this was good if wildly lurid.

Best Lines:
“Two deaths from falls down the same stairs is going to be rather difficult to explain.”

“Yet it hurt to see those things carried up into the attic, for so seldom did anything come back down.”

“Let him suffer the consequences of making her what she is...”
Tags: 2nd hand book store find, book review
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