Heaven (Casteel Saga)

I feel so ashamed to allocate four stars to this trashy, completely unrealistic, and occasionally disturbing novel. However, if I didn't, I'd just be lying to myself.

V.C Andrews is the absolute Queen of Trash, Queen of Ethereal-Beauties-Who-are-Constantly-in-Fear-of-Getting-Raped, Queen of Handsome-Evil-Rich Men, and Queen of What-the-Hell! I've never read (or even heard) of another author mass-producing such drivel for the eagerly waiting masses to lap up. If another such author exists - please, let me know!

Heaven is a young girl who lives in the hills of West Virginia with her bad ol' Pa, who hates her because she killed his one true love being born - Angel. Her and her siblings are sold off one by one. Heaven to a psychopathically show more unstable woman who clearly needs to get over her past. Cue dalliances with nutters husband. Anguish ensues.

Essentially, Heaven is Cinderella-porn at it's best (worst?), set among a backdrop of hillbilly shin-digs, mean and nasty townspeople, evil step-mothers, severe abuse, and shining heros without horses. show less

This book, the first of the Casteel Saga, was tragic and poorly written, but for V. C. Andrews, it was relatively tame. It opens with a poor family living in the hill country of West Virginia—a place the author calls the Willies. The protagonist is Heaven Leigh Casteel, a ten-year-old whose birth mother died when she was born. She finds out early that Pa hates her because of it. Step-mom, Sarah, is an enigma. She has raised Heaven, produced and raised four children of her own, takes care of Grandma and Grandpa, and does all this in a run-down cabin, with no heat, little food, and non-stop work all for the love of a man who never comes home then gives her syphilis. She finally leaves—thank you, Jesus. Pa then proceeds to sell off his show more children. Some of the children wind up better off, but not all, although there are no rapes and no incest. At least, not yet. I can't wait to see what the next book in the series brings. Trashy good! show less

This book has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, but it brings back such fun memories! I was about 14 when I first read this book, giggling with my girlfriends over all the dirty parts. Re-reading it as a "grown-up" cemented my love for the book - it's horrible, tasteless, trashy and loads of fun!

I see it as a poor man's Little House on the Prairie (if they had lived in West Virginia) You've got Ma, Pa and a bunch of unkempt children sharing a one bedroom house. Of course, there are a few parts that are different. In this book, Pa gets an STD and sells all his kids at $500 a pop. Plus, some of the brothers and sisters aren't exactly appropriate with each other. And at one point, the kids contemplate eating the family dog because they're show more hungry. But other than that, it's EXACTLY the same... show less

I can never really say I was ever a big fan of VC Andrews. I am starting to rethink that because I really did enjoy this book. Just like the Gates of Paradise I picked this up because I had planned on watching the lifetime movies with mom. The Casteel series was the last of the family sagas that V.C. Andrews had a hand in before she died and her ghostwriter took over. Which is something I didn’t know. It's impossible not to compare it to the Dollanganger series, especially since both dark melodramatic poor examples of what we or at least what I expect “family” to be
HEAVEN is about a young girl named Heaven Leigh (get it?) Casteel. She lives in the hills, cramped in a small shed with her four other siblings, grandparents, father, show more and stepmother. She is the only child from her father's first marriage; her mother died in childbirth, and her father kept her on a pedestal in his mind. No other woman can match up, not even his daughters or his new wife, so he mostly ignores his children, abuses his wife, and is a regular attendee of the local "den of ill repute" despite the fact that they're all starving. I found the father repulsive and the kids all charming. The descriptions were beautifully done even though they were brutal and sad.

Heaven catches the eye of a rich boy because of her beauty, and this is a must for of Andrews's, too: there's always a soft and sensitive boy hero figure to whisk the heroine away from her wretched life-- until he proves to be just as disturbing as everyone else, only better at hiding it. Logan doesn't have a chance to show off any true colors he might have, though, as Heaven's father gets an STD, and kind of loses it after his wife has a deformed stillborn child; he gets the brilliant idea that the solution to their money problems is to sell off his children for $500/ea. to local rich people in the area.

Heaven gets sent off to live with a woman named Kitty, but her nickname could be "Mommy Dearest." She lives in a house filled with creepy ceramic animals and everything is pink. She has violent mood swings, and living in Casa de Crazy, you could find yourself having your hair lovingly combed out one minute, only to be thrown into a scalding hot Lysol bath the next Her only solace in this house is Kitty's young husband, Cal, but his feelings towards Heaven-- as you would expect-- aren't exactly pure. The feelings that would later ruin things with someone else.

HEAVEN was a good book and by good book I mean you have to have an open mind for the dark parts of it and you have to be okay with the writing which is great in some areas and falls short in others. I will be continuing the series if only to see how the tornado that is this series finally touches down. show less

Well written but not my kind of story. Heaven Leigh Casteel undergoes many ordeals (thankfully none too horrific for my squeamish tastes though some came close). The main reason that this isn't my kind of story is that I don't feel that I, the reader, gained anything from this harrowing of my soul that I experienced reading this. And I didn't like the ending which was basically upbeat if you can believe that Pa really had changed his entire character. Kitty's deathbed conversion seems more probable. I did like the way the Rev. Wise was shown in his true colors by Fanny's goodbye visit to Heaven, though my more vengeful side would have liked it if he had been exposed to the whole town. But after all of Heaven's insights into people's show more character & motivation throughout the book, it offended me that she suddenly lost this ability in the final chapter. I felt that she would have recognized that Cal & Tom were trying to do what was best for her, even if it wasn't exactly what she wanted. show less

While I felt that the Flowers in the Attic was a excellent book, I feel that the Casteel series is overall the best (at least, the parts written by VC herself) I have read this book 7 or 8 times, and I never get tired of it, as I notice something new every time I read it.

You can't help but feel bad for this poor girl since she is so mistreated by her father for something that was not even her fault! And you also have to wonder how someone like Heaven's mom would fall for someone like Luke Casteel, but then as the story goes along you see what a suave and charming bastard Luke Casteel can be.

You wonder why things happen the way they do, but much like Flowers in the Attic, the story of Heaven continues through a series, and the Heaven show more series is just as enjoyable, with VCA's writing talent but a different story from Flowers in the Attic so that this book isn't repetitive or boring. Enjoy! show less

"Heaven" introduces us to the Casteel family, the lowest of the hillbilly scum in the mountains of West Virginia known as the Willies. Heaven lives with her father's parents, her father and stepmother, and her four half-siblings in a tiny two room shack. She learns at the age of ten that she's not fully related to her brothers and sisters, that she is instead a product of her father's first marriage to a young Bostonian runaway named Leigh (the fact that her younger brother is only 6 months younger than her might have tipped me off, but hey, she *was* only ten when she found out. Of course the really horrifying part is that Luke was fooling around on his wife who was six months pregnant. That gives you a good idea as to how awesome he show more is). The Casteel family have it pretty rough in their mountain shack, and when Luke, her dad, gets sick and starts spending less time with the family, his wife and Heaven's stepmom Sarah gets pretty irritated and eventually she takes off, leaving the kids to fend for themselves and look after Grandpa after Granny dies. Dad decides to sell his kids rather than, hmmm, I don't know, take care of them. And luckily the two little kids go to a great home and live happily ever after (although their relationship seemed like it might go incestuous, but hey, it's V.C. Andrews, and that's par for the course) but Tom, Fanny, and Heaven aren't so lucky. Heaven ends up in the home of one of Luke's ex-girlfriends, Kitty, whom he knocked up before Leigh (good grief, dude). Kitty gave herself an abortion and ended up barren, so she was excited to be able to buy one of Luke's kids. She basically treats Heaven like a live in slave, making her cook, clean, do the laundry, for hours on end before and after school. And her husband seduces her and takes advantage of her. show less