Seeds of Yesterday

The Seeds of Yesterday.  V. C. Andrews.  #4 Dollanganger series. Published by Pocket.  Originally 1984.  408 pages.  Source: Purchased from betterworldbooks.com.

First sentence: And so it came to pass the summer when I was fifty-two and Chris was fifty-four that our mother's promise of riches, made long ago when I was twelve and Chris was fourteen, was at last realized.

Plot:  Cathy and Chris, entwined with the evil that haunts their children, living with the fearful spectre of Foxworth Hall, are awaiting the final, shuddering climax... prisoners of a past they cannot escape.

My thoughts: This family needs more therapy than can be provided by one professional. Just saying. Cathy's youngest boy terrorized the family his entire life and she fed his crazy behavior instead of actually addressing it. Now in his manhood he is very wealthy thanks to his grandmother leaving him the vast majority of the Foxworth estate. And he continues to terrorize them all.  This story will make you believe that insanity is hereditary.  

Cathy lives in an alternate reality.  Thinking that life can be normal when your spouse is your brother!  This really is a sick and twisted story but I have to see it to the end.  One more book left in the series.

The Witch's Daughter

The Witch's Daughter.  Paula Brackston. Thomas Dunne Books.  December 2008. 305 pages. Source: Audio library.

First Sentence: Bess ran.  The clear night sky and fat moon gave ample illumination for her flight.

Plot: My name is Elizabeth Anne Hawksmith, and my age is three hundred and eighty-four years. Each new settlement asks for a new journal, and so this Book of Shadows begins.
In the spring of 1628, the Witchfinder of Wessex finds himself a true Witch. As Bess Hawksmith watches her mother swing from the Hanging Tree she knows that only one man can save her from the same fate at the hands of the panicked mob: the Warlock Gideon Masters, and his Book of Shadows. Secluded at his cottage in the woods, Gideon instructs Bess in the Craft, awakening formidable powers she didn't know she had and making her immortal. She couldn't have foreseen that even now, centuries later, he would be hunting her across time, determined to claim payment for saving her life.

In present-day England, Elizabeth has built a quiet life for herself, tending her garden and selling herbs and oils at the local farmers' market. But her solitude abruptly ends when a teenage girl called Tegan starts hanging around. Against her better judgment, Elizabeth begins teaching Tegan the ways of the Hedge Witch, in the process awakening memories—and demons—long thought forgotten.

My thoughts:  I enjoyed this story of a young girl who was put in a position to either "become a witch" to escape burning or die for being one even though she was not.  

She lived saving lives working with herbs and medicines then into actual operating rooms and working as a Doctor in the earliest of times when this was not the norm for a woman to be practicing surgical procedures.  She tired to do nothing but good and not to use "magic" for crazy selfish things.  All her life as a witch was spent trying to hide from the warlock Gideon Masters.  Gideon loved her (or so he said) and pursued her for centuries.

Elizabeth (Bess) spent a lot of lonely years because she could not get close to anyone.  A life of mostly solitude.  

This is not a book promoting witchcraft.  I would recommend it to young adults as there are some light suggestive situations over the centuries.

Seduction of a Highland Lass

Seduction of a Highland Lass. Maya Banks.  Ballantine Books. 2011. 323 pages.  Source: Audio Library.

First Sentence: Alaric McCabe looked out over the expanse of McCabe land and grappled with the indecision plaguing him.

Plot: Fiercely loyal to his elder brother, Alaric McCabe leads his clan in the fight for their birthright. Now he is prepared to wed for duty, as well. But on his way to claim the hand of Rionna McDonald, daughter of a neighboring chieftain, he is ambushed and left for dead. Miraculously, his life is saved by the soft touch of a Highland angel, a courageous beauty who will put to the test his fealty to his clan, his honor, and his deepest desires.

An outcast from her own clan, Keeley McDonald was betrayed by those she loved and trusted. When the wounded warrior falls from his horse, she is drawn to his strong, lean body. The wicked glint in his green eyes ignites a passion that will follow them back to Alaric’s keep, where their forbidden love draws them deeper into the pleasures of the flesh. But as conspiracy and danger circle closer, Alaric must make an impossible choice: Will he betray his blood ties for the woman he loves?

My thoughts: Book two in the Highlander series was just as exciting as the first.  A young lass done wrong by her family member  and banished from the clan but justice (of course) is served in the end.  The McCabe men are dreamy and loyal to their clan and family. They are rule their clan with a firm but just hand and they expect the same from other clans.  This series does contain adult content.  I have book three on hold!

A Man Called Ove

A Man Called Ove. Fredrik Backman. Atria Books. August 2012. 337 pages.  Source: Audio library book.

First sentence: Ove is fifty-nine. He drives a Saab.

Plot: A grumpy yet loveable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door.

Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations. (Goodreads)

My thoughts: When I first started this book I wondered why in the world everyone would be all up in arms about this cranky old man!  The more I read the more I felt it had a similar feel to his book "My grandmother wanted me to tell you she's sorry".  It too had a sort of depressing feel about most of the book and then the end surprised you.

This story kept going from current day events to events in Ove's past.  Sometimes so quickly it took me off guard as to what was going on.  But I soon got the feel and flow of the story.  Ove is a very lonely man since his wife Sonya passed away.  So lonely in fact he had tried to commit suicide on countless occasions.  There was always someone there to interfere with his plans.  The ending left me feeling very warm and after all, happy to have read this one!

The Witching Hour

The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #1). Anne Rice. Alfred A. Knopf. 1990. 965 pages (Source: Kindle Library)

First sentence: The doctor woke up afraid.

Plot: On the veranda of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking... and The Witching Hour begins.

It begins in our time with a rescue at sea.  Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery - aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches - finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life.  He is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a sensory power that mystifies and frightens him.

As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and - in passionate alliance - set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, the novel moves backward and forward in time from today's New Orleans and San Francisco to long ago Amsterdam and a chateau in the France of Louis XIV.  An intricate tale of evil unfolds - an evil unleashed in seventeenth-century Scotland, where the first "witch", Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjures up the spirit she names Lasher... a creation that spells her own destruction and torments each of her descendants in turn.

From the coffee plantation of Port au Prince, where the great Mayfair fortune is made and the legacy of their dark power is almost destroyed, to Civil War New Orleans, as Julien - the clan's only male to be endowed with occult powers - provides for the dynasty its foothold in America, the dark, luminous story encompasses dramas of seduction and death, episodes of tenderness and healing.  And always - through peril and escape, tension and release - there swirl around us the echoes of eternal war: innocence versus the corruption of the spirit, sanity against madness, life against death.  With a dreamlike power, the novel draws us, through circuitous, twilight paths, to the present and Rowan's increasingly inspired and risky moves in the merciless game that binds her to her heritage.  And in New Orleans, on Christmas Eve, this strangest of family sagas is brought to its startling climax.

My thoughts: Though this books genre is horror, it's not really a horror story.  It is the classic good versus evil. I am a huge fan of anything New Orleans though I have never been there and the bulk of this story is in New Orleans.

There is a secret organization called the Talamasca that has been around as long as the witches and they have documented from afar the lives of each generation of the Mayfair witches.  A couple times the current member in charge of the Mayfair files made contact with the witch of their time or the family it ended badly... with death.   The bulk of the story is actually a person in present times reading the entries on the Mayfair witches in order to help the current unaware witch whom he loves.  Yes, a love story too!

The current witch, Rowan Mayfair, was adopted out to a family member to be kept away from the home where the spirit Lasher resided with Rowan's mother.  When her mother died Lasher appeared to Rowan.  Rowan discovers where she is from and heads back to learn more of her family and history.  She reads the files and decides it's time to make a change.  Lasher is going to face a battle.  Rowan is a very strong witch and very determined to end this cycle with the aide of her lover and future husband Michael Curry. But a twist towards the end... she must fight this battle to save those whom she loves from harm at the hand of Lasher.

It's been a suspensful read and yes, there is a sequel...