Dark Angel - Virginia Andrews

== Buying The Book ==

I bought this book from a charity shop to further my collection by this author. I bought the whole set in one trip, I got lucky and they were all there. It is a brilliant series and well worth the money it goes for in the shops. I paid about 50p for the book, the price on th ecover is £5.99 or £6.99 I can't remember which. It's usually available on amazon and ebay for less than this though.


...the 2nd book in the Casteel family saga. It follows the life of Heaven Leigh Casteel. A motherless girl whose father sells her and her brothers and sisters to make some money. When the woman she is sold to dies Heaven is sent to live with her grandparents in Farthingale Manor. She soon learns that there are some family secrets surrounding her grandparents and the disappearance of her mother Leigh who ran away when she was younger.

... more

Buying The Book

I bought this book from a charity shop to further my collection by this author. I bought the whole set in one trip, I got lucky and they were all there. It is a brilliant series and well worth the money it goes for in the shops. I paid about 50p for the book, the price on th ecover is £5.99 or £6.99 I can't remember which. It's usually available on amazon and ebay for less than this though.

The Book

This is the 2nd book in the Casteel family saga. It follows the life of Heaven Leigh Casteel. A motherless girl whose father sells her and her brothers and sisters to make some money. When the woman she is sold to dies Heaven is sent to live with her grandparents in Farthingale Manor. She soon learns that there are some family secrets surrounding her grandparents and the disappearance of her mother Leigh who ran away when she was younger.

Heaven is desperate to be reunited with her brothers and sisters and sets out to not only track them down, but to find out who she really is along the way.

This is a wonderfully moving story which carries on throughout the rest of the series.

The Author

Virginia Andrews died of breast cancer in 1986, leaving a considerable amount of work unpublished. Her family employed a ghost writer to carry on her work.

What I Thought Of It

I thought this was a brilliant book, and indeed a brilliant series. All her books are of the same high quality and are all well worth reading. The Casteel Saga especially.
It is a very emotional story about loss and betrayal. I couldn't personally relate to any of the characters as nothing like this has ever happened to me, although I could understand where the characters were coming from regarding their feelings. Fellings of betrayal from the only father you've ever known selling you off like a piece of meat. The feeling of loss from never having had the chance to meet your birth mother, and then the woman who brought you up running away without so much as a by your leave.

The characters of the story had a great deal to put up with and I think they coped with what was thrown at them remarkably, I douobt I would cope so well under the same circumstances to be honest. I know it's just fiction but things like that happen to real people aswell, I think thats what makes the story more compelling, the fact that real people may have had to cope in similar situations as the ones you are reading about.

I read somewhere that some of the authors stories (eg flowers in the attic) are based on true events, i'm not sure if this one is but the fact that it could well have been really gave me something to think about. Whenever I finishe one of Virginia Andrews' series I always feel a bit emotional, I guess thats just the effect her work has on me, I have no idea why this is, things affect people in a variety of different ways, i'm sure there's people who take alot more away from the books than me and people who take away alot less, if nothing.

I love the way the author carries on the same general theme throughout all her books, the family secrets, loss of a parent quite young, betrayal by those you hold dearest. These are things that real people fear the most, and she has tapped into this and brought it to life in the form of fiction, we can read about it, all the while knowing that in the back of our minds and locked away deep in our hearts these are fears imbedded us since childhood, that one day our mothers or fathers would just disappear from our lives. That our whole world would be turned upside down due to a family secret from years beforehand being revealed.

The fact that an action taken by one of the younger characters grandparents years before they were born can affect the lives of three or four generations of their families in significant ways also gives the reader something to think about. Just think, if you make a wrong decision tomorrow it could keep coming back to haunt you and your children and grandchildren for decades to come. We as people have so much responsibility to ensure our families future happiness, I think this is what the author was trying to highlight with her books as they all have the same concept of an ancestors secrets coming back to ruin their lives when they least expect it.

My recommendations

I would recommend to anyone that they should read the whole series from start to finish, for all the reasons I have mentioned above. It is a wonderful saga written by a talented author. 

...less