Virginia Andrews, Lightning Strikes

This was a book I received as a free gift and was consequently put aside for a while as I had others that I preferred to read.

The story centres on a young girl of mixed race - Rain Arnold - a member of a poor family in America. In the early stages of the book we are told how she finds out that she is adopted and that her real mother is from a wealthy family, and whose college liaison with a black boy resulted in a baby. As this was too much of a disgrace for the family, the baby (Rain) was 'disposed of' by adoption.

Following the murder of her adoptive sister, her mother decided to tell her the truth and reintroduce her to her real family. It is arranged that she should go to live with her real maternal grandmother - although she is only to be known as someone they are 'helping' - a charity case. She is sent to a private school where she excels at acting and is chosen to be sent to a prestigious stage school in London where she will live with her grandmother's sister - as an au pair. This, apparently, covers the story of the first book of the series "Rain" for people (like me) who haven't read it.

On her arrival in London the book seems to take a step back of some sixty years (or thereabouts) as the dialogue of the English people is incredibly dated and rather reminiscent of old American films about England circa 1940-ish. After the initial amusement, I found this rather offensive. The great aunt is incredibly rich being married into the renowned Endfield family (apparently English aristocracy) and they employ several servants. There is a manservant called - Boggs, who is 'in charge' of everyone, a butler who appears to be a general dogsbody, a cook - Mrs. Chester (a Mrs Bridges look-alike) and Mary Margaret the maid - all with a poor American idea of a London/Cockney accent - something after the style of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. For instance:

"I been tellin' 'er not ta be mopin' about with a face down ta 'er feet or she'll never catch a bloke worth a bob, but she don't listen ta me. Maybe she'll take a lesson from the likes of you."

Rain is allocated a small room in the servants' quarters and her life there is far from happy.

When she started at her stage school I found it particularly noticeable that the only people she actually liked enough to make friends with were NOT English, the main one being Canadian - and others French - where again the written accent jarred on my sensibilities.

Whilst she is in London she decided to look for her real father who is apparently teaching there. There are other 'side' stories while she is in London but nothing seems significant.

The writer (apparently a ghost writer as Virginia Andrews died in 1986) had obviously visited London by the descriptions of various places however; did they not speak to any English people while they were here? I would say not. Obviously this was written basically for the American market with not much consideration for the readers in other countries. Perhaps I am overly sensitive, but I found for the most part the general descriptions of English people as a whole were quite insulting

Having read other reviews of this book obviously some people enjoyed it - I didn't. Possibly, had I read the first in the series, I might have felt differently - although I doubt it. I will say that the only thing that kept me reading the book was to find out if anything of significance happened. Having read the early Virginia Andrews books I hoped that it had SOMETHING of a story. However, apparently it must have been left for further books in the series (I believe this is the second of four) I have not attempted to obtain any of the others to find out. I think, had the four novels been combined, this may have been reminiscent of the earlier books but the impression I had was of reading only part of a story and it gave me no incentive to read any more.

Would I recommend it? Not to any of the people I know that's for sure!