V.C. Andrews, Celeste

It's just a very exciting book, V.C. Andrews's Celeste..it makes you feel the characters...the way they feel...and the way they do things. IT'S JUST SO REAL!

Celeste

V.C. Andrews

Pocket, Apr 2004, $7.99

ISBN: 0743428625

Twins Noble and Celeste Atwell are part of a close knit family though their Mommy Sarah favors her son over her daughter. Mommy takes the children to purchase amulets to ward off evil over the concerns of her increasingly worried husband Arthur that Sarah is over the edge and their kids are suffering. Not long afterward, Arthur, a skeptic of mystic powers, dies from a cerebral aneurism. Mommy knows that the spirits took Arthur away because he failed to heed her advice about protection.

Mommy becomes displeased and concerned when Celeste displays mystical prowess before Noble. At a nearby stream, Celeste and Noble push and pull with his fishing rod. When she lets go, he falls, cracks his head on a rock, and dies in the accident. Mommy is stunned that her "daughter" died as from now on Celeste is to be Noble and she is so convincing that the authorities believe the female twin died. Though a bit confused, Celeste's personality wanes over the years as with Mommy's impetus Noble takes over until adolescence sets in encouraged by Elliot moving next door.

Though CELESTE is the author's usual theme of a dysfunctional family in which the suffering of the children from deranged adults surface in adolescence, C.V. Andrews provides an intriguing thriller. Still the initial reactions that Celeste could not pose as Noble and how did the authorities get fooled are overcome when one realizes how isolated the twins were and how Mommy believed that the girl died. Though Mommy seems out of the Bates Motel, Celeste as Noble and later as female yearnings surface makes for a fine tale that will excite fans of the author.

Harriet Klausner