Dawn - V C Andrews

So far T Y has been KILLING ME on the Horrible Dare Challenge *cackles*, having plowed her way through both The Patmans of Sweet Valley High and Claudia and the Little Liar. She has suffered her torment with good grace, but I am not going to. Dawn was SO bad that I am going to make ALL OF YOU read it with me, in real time. Hold on to your bacon bits.

p. 2 - Dawn's family = poor, therefore she shares a room with her brother, therefore he gazes at her lustfully while she is accidentally naked *flashbacks to Wideacre* WHY IS SHE ACCIDENTALLY NAKED AM I REALLY ONLY ON PAGE 2!??!

p. 3 - Sooooooo, urbody else in Dawn's family is dark, and she is blond w/ freckles. Her mom makes a point of insisting that Dawn deserves better than all of them. I feel...I feel like Andrews is trying to tell me something.

p. 9 - All of this hick dialect is totally obsolete now that Sally Jean has to give up her housekeeping job because she done got knocked up again.

p. 19 - 'Momma looks like she's getting thinner and thinner and not stronger and stronger, Daddy.' What do you think do you think we should do, we should do?

p. 20 - STOP LETTING JIMMY ACCIDENTALLY OOGLE YOU!!!

p. 22 - Because daddy's the janitor, Dawn and Jimmy are off to the rich kid school, Emerson Peabody!!! *snorts*

p. 32 - Befriended by the loser? Check. Anathema to the cool girls? Check. Hit on by the Top Cool Girl's hot brother? CHECK!

p. 38 - Philip Cutler is Edward-cullen-style flawless. As in, that is his ONLY character quality. His hair 'waved just enough to be perfect. His eyes were cerulean blue.'

p. 40 - 'Your parents gave you the right name. You're definitely as fresh as the birth of a new day.' *barfs* Pick-up lines should never include the word 'birth.'

p. 42 - 'You've got the clearest, prettiest eyes I've ever seen. The only one whose eyes come close is my mother.' Who I married, right after I killed my father. Am I right, guys?

p. 56 - Oh noes! Philip Cutler, whose hair is the same flaxen color as Dawn's and whose mother has Dawn's eyes, he wants to take her for a ride in his car! He wants to TOUCH HER BOOOBS! I have a nasty sense they should not be doing this.

p. 88 - Dawn got the solo in the school concert, but Momma's in the hospital! Ready...set...tragic!

Ok, and then in a quick bunch of chapters in which child services seems to be completely absent, Dawn's mom dies at THE EXACT MOMENT she is singing her solo, Dawn's parents are revealed to be Not Her Real Parents, and she is hustled off with immediacy and brusqueness to her new/old family from whence she was stolen, THE CULTERS!! *dum dum dum*

p. 120 - Dawn's new, rail-thin, heavily be-pearled grandmother: 'you will have to be...in a word, brought up properly.' Bish, pleeze. That is three words.

p. 138 - Mama Cutler's bedroom has a closet WITH ITS OWN CLOSET! Also, the bathroom fixtures are made of gold!!! But where is the neon sign saying 'Rich people live here'?

p. 148 - Oh noes! Evil Grandmother has caught Dawn snooping in the storage room, and has stolen her Magic Pearls of Power!! And has pushed her! And she has fallen, her 'bottom aching with soreness.' ACHING WITH SORENESS!! Oh, I am so hot with heat! I am starving from hunger! I ACHE WITH SORENESS!!

p. 153 - Philip the Golden: 'I can't think of you as my sister. I just can't.' PLEASE, Philip, for the love of ANYTHING, start thinking of her as your sister. Incest = 3-eyed babies!!! Stop thinking of all the wonderful things you two could do at Cutler Cove! Stop smiling at her sexily! HOLY HELL, ANDREWS!!! *throws book*

*retrieves book*

Now she's discussing her 'relationship' with Philip with former-enemy-new-best-friend Clara Sue 'satan-face' Cutler!!! *dies*

p. 173 - Ah for the days when 'fluffy' was a complimentary adjective when applied to 'hair,' and when rifts could be mended between cantankerous grandmothers and long-lost-granddaughters with a heart-felt impromptu song. Oh no wait. Just that first one. Grandmother still hates you, Dawn.

p. 180 - Do not want! Halt! Stop with the kissing! It is verboten!!!! YOU ARE STILL SIBLINGS IN THE DARK!!!!!

p. 182 - 'Philip...is not unlike a wild horse just finding his legs.' And by 'legs' I mean 'leg.' As in, third leg. Well, fifth, if we're keeping with the horse analogy. But I really mean dong.

p. 192 - Finally, the big reveal! Dawn was stolen...TO REPLACE A STILLBORN BABY!! I would never have seen this coming.

p. 198 - Urgh! Grandmother is making Dawn strip because she thinks she has a stolen necklace hidden on her, and it's taking PAGES! I feel so drrrty.

p. 206 - Oh good, Jimmy has run away from his foster home and showed up chez Cutler, and oh good, he's soaked to the bone and ERGO must strip down (stripping is apparently en vogue), and OH GOOD, he and Dawn are no longer siblings. I anticipate tension!!

p. 217 - Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, their hearts knew the truth long before they did. So all that pre-we're-not-siblings-reveal oogling was kosher.

p. 219 - Always with the boobs! Apparently it is impossible to kiss this girl without also groping her.

Hee hee hee! 'that male part of him.' I'm confused! What are we talking about?

p. 230 - ZOMGACK!! Just as she was getting ready to 'give herself' to Jimmy, Philip the Golden Who Is Now Her Blood Relation has trapped her in the shower and deflowered her!!!!!!!

p. 238 - ZOMGACK again!! Satan-face ratted Jimmy out and now the coppers are dragging him back to his abusive foster home!!

p. 244 - Ahh ha ha ha, Satan-face is such a villain. 'I will shatter your dreams until they're nothing more than twisted remnants of your hopes and will bring you only nightmares. Nothing less will do!'

p. 256 - The truth comes out! Grandmother arranged the whole 'kidnapping' because Dawn's mother was diddling the help, and Dawn isn't of Cutler blood! ZOUNDS!

Ok the end, and you can stop reading here but I wanted to compile a Cornucopia of Abysm. Writing in a decade that brought us such obvious similes as 'cuts like a knife' and 'hungry like the wolf,' Andrews was pretty wanton with her comparisons.

'His eyes turned from pools of sadness to coal-black pools of anger...' before dissolving into pools of hilarity!!

'I could imagine just what it had been like for him running all those miles, pounding the pavement to drive away the blackbird of sorrow that had made a nest in his heart.'

'Jimmy's face and Fern's face fell away, peeling off like leaves blown from tree limbs.' Ok, the sorrow needs to have fewer cuddly blackbirds, and the nostalgia needs less...face-peeling.

'My heart wouldn't stop pounding, thumping against my chest as if there were a tiny little drummer inside me beating his drumsticks against my bones.' Squeeeeeeeee, tiny little drummer! Oh no wait, we are upset about something, aren't we? Andrews, you are throwing me off.

THE END FOR REALS!! One caterpillar. T Y, you are a devious thing.