Mad Tea Party

The Gothic Novel.  Someone on the V.C. Andrews message board recommended for reading old gothic romances, the mother of VCA novels.  Other than Victoria Holt, I had no idea these books existed other than the ones that were published around the turn of the century.  I combed one of my local used bookstores and found ONE hiding in the horror section.  She said they were hard to find but I didn’t think they were THAT hard.  I was wrong. :p  And let me add that I don’t understand the way the romance sections are set up at all.  I don’t read romances so I’ve never braved these sections before.  They have historical romance, paranormal romance, Silhouettes, and Regencies.  These I understand.  But then they have three unlabeled romance sections that all go from A-Z by author.  Three.  I don’t get it.

So onto the book.  Evil in the Family by Grace Corren.  The cover is typically gothic, with the heroine wearing that deer-in-the-headlights expression.  I do adore the lovely touch of the red moon behind the house.  And how they advertise the non-glare paper.  ^_^  We have the lovely Dana Gentry, who’s a black-haired blue-eyed beauty.  He parents and brother died in a car accident three weeks earlier leaving her orphaned at the age of nineteen.  With no one else to turn to she goes to her mother’s sister, Gladys, her only living relative, who also been estranged from her family for thirty years.  Her mother filled her head with happy tales of five children growing up in a loving home so when she gets there she’s very disappointed by the dilapidated old house that meets her. 

Notice how R.L. Stine’s name isn’t taking up half the cover.  Second edition, baby. 

This…piece of trash for lack of a better word, is about sixteen year old Twyla Gay Stark who moves from rural Texas to upperclass Highland Park (well, she doesn’t actually live in it, just next to it, which means she gets to go to the same school as all the rich kids).  It is told in alternating POV’s from Twyla Gay and incredibly naïve and bigoted Myrna Fry.  This book is trashy, racist, label-dropping, completely and utterly unrealistic, yet I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN.  You keep reading, thinking it can’t get worse, it just can’t.