Delia's Crossing is about a young teen, living in Mexico, who's immediately hit by tragedy in the beginning of the book. She says,
"My suffering hadn't ended. It might only have just begun."
Guuurrrl, you're in a V.C. Andrews book. Of course it's only just begun.
This is the first V.C. Andrews book I've read that's been newer (before that, the last book I'd read was Broken Flower, which was published five years ago, though it doesn't feel that long), so I was wondering if Andrew Neiderman--the V.C. Andrews ghostwriter--had changed things up a bit. At first I thought I detected less use of metaphors and wondered if maybe someone had wisened him up about the overuse of metaphors in his books, but the end count was 150...about the same as I took count of in his past books.
And the content wasn't any better. As with previous V.C. Andrews books, the writing's so juvenile that a fifth grader could easily understand all, barring the sexual content. The author relies on throwing one painful experience after another at the protagonist, to the point where it's an obvious crutch...forced plot points rather than bits of story (this is what V.C. Andrews books are mostly known for, hence my joke above).
While V.C. Andrews books need all they can get to become more palatable to readers, Neiderman went one mistake further by making a native Mexican the protagonist of his story. I once read an article which warns authors against wanting to incorporate a character of another heritage into their book so as to please readers sharing that ethnicity. There's a reason that "write what you know" is an adage among the writing community. It's best for an author to stick to writing about characters who share his/her background, otherwise the character comes off as phony because the writer--having not shared the same background--can't get into the mindset of his or her own character. Of course, this isn't always true, but it proves true to the nth degree in this book. We're supposed to believe Delia's just so good at English that she can understand 99% of what's said by the Americans in the book. She speaks English except for a few commonplace Spanish words that everyone knows which are peppered in, or other little phrases that Neiderman plugged into Babelfish for a translation into Spanish. I also read somewhere that this is a big mistake in books, the little bits of a different language added in among the English. It just comes off as a phony gimmick (oh, which it was, in this case).
Going along with ethnic background here...don't Mexican men sometimes smooch on the cheek sometimes, seem more affection in friendship than men in America? Delia seemed so shocked by the kiss-on-the-cheek one male gives to another in this book, and I feel like if she were a real Mexican girl, she wouldn't have had such an extreme inner reaction. That does remind me that I have to say I'm pleased at Niederman for including a male/male relationship into one of his books, at least...it's something most male authors aren't wont to do.
OH! And despite the rest of the book being formulaic (I've been able to predict almost every horrible incident that's about to come in V.C. Andrews books), there was one surprise for me beyond the gay relationship. So there's that...
I'm sad to say this newer book proves that books published under the V.C. Andrews name are not improving. It's a shame that no justice is being done to the author's original charm in books. They're just a joke now.
That being said, I'll continue reading because they're fun to scoff at.