Customer Reviews

Darkest Hour (Cutler Family)

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"Darkest Hour," the fifth and final book in the Cutler family series, takes place in--where else?--the South, on a Virginia plantation called The Meadows. It's owned by Lillian Booth's family, which consists of her parents, her religious older sister (Emily), and her sickly younger sister (Eugenia--which, Cutler fans will notice, was Dawn Longchamp's proper first name).

Lillian, who is better known as simply Grandmother Cutler in this series, has about the same life as most other V. C. Andrews heroines. Her innocence is lost over the years when 1) she discovers a shocking family secret: that her parents aren't really her parents, 2) two people close to her die (Eugenia and her first boyfriend, Niles Thompson), and 3) she's raped by her uncle, resulting in an unwanted pregnancy. ...

Probably my favorite part in "Darkest Hour," though it is rather morbid, is when Lillian's young boyfriend dies after sneaking out of her bedroom window one night, and he's found "the next morning, crumpled beside the house, his neck broken from the fall." This was an interesting twist to the book since most boyfriends live until the very end. His death is just one of many things that make Lillian believe her older sister--that she is, in fact, evil; that everything she does turns to pot (to put it in Amazon.com-friendly terms). While her self-esteem plummets, Lillian creates a shell around herself to resist any more pain, turning her into the hard woman that she is later renowned for in this series.

Although I wasn't really into the Cutler family series (I enjoyed the Dollanganger and Casteel ones a lot more), "Darkest Hour" is one the remaining few books that still seems to resemble an original V. C. Andrews plot. After this series, most of the others are just copycats of the same old incestuous story line.

I have read most the VC Andrew family series (Dollanganger, Casteel, Cutler, Landry...) and they pretty much go downhill. Don't get me wrong, Heaven and Dawn are wonderful characters and Ruby can have an honorable mention, but VC Andrews' "voice" gets farther and farther from the prose with each new book. The style of Flowers in the Attic was raw, unforgettable and the newer ones have lost that through the ghost writers, but they are still good books. You can still feel VC Andrews' hand in them. Darkest Hour is one of the best.

It's the story of pretty Lillian Booth and her family, a rich line of Southern plantation owners. Lillian has always been a little different, a little brighter than her two sisters, sickly Eugenia and bible spouting Emily. But as Lillian grows, she finds out just how different. (...).

All in all, this book was fabulous. I cried on not less than two occasions(...) and was utterly surprised by some of the plot twists. (...). Imagination is always useful, though! Fans of the Cutler series will not be too disappointed.

I honestly liked the entire series but "Darkest hour" is the best Cutler novel. While other readers said that it holds no surprises, I have to disagree. We get to know an entire different Lillian Cutler. Where is the cold old lady that tried to ruin Dawn's life in so many ways? This book tells the story of an innocent girl that truly finds no happiness, no matter how hard she tries. Whenever there's a glimmer of hope, something happens to destroy it.

Lillian's childhood doesn't justify how she treated Dawn. But it helps the reader to understand why she became the woman she was in the end.

A touching and surprising novel.

The book that I am reading " Darkest Hour " is at the same time exsillerating and frusterating.Three sisters share the same family, but of course there is always one bad apple in every bunch.This book by V.C.Andrews is one of those books you cant put down.I thought this book was very interesting because the humble person in the book is always having bad things happening to her. I highly recmmend this book to anyone.

I had mixed emotions about this book. I'll start with the bad. It held no surprises like past VC Andrews books had which was disappointing. This whole Cutler series kept repeating itself over and over again. One character always seemed too much like past charcters. I kind of figured this book would explain why Lillian hated Dawn so much. But it didn't. In fact I would've thought Lillian would pity her. If this book would have kept going on and wrote about how Lillian changed after first arriving at Cutler's Cove I might have rated this book different. I also had to wonder why Dawn's orginal name was Eugenia. Why would Lillian have a say in naming her grandchild after her beloved sister, Eugenia? Considering she knew it was her husbands child. She had to have known that Randolph was not the father before Dawn was born. Other than that the book was too bad. It was one of the sadder one's I've read. But you can get through this series without having to read it.

then I grew up and dug out my Andrews books after they'd been sitting in my closet for a time. I reread this morbid tale one night as I tried to fall asleep. At first it entertained me. But having parted ways with these stories for years, I realized that it was the same spark that got people to read books like Mommie Dearest or Flowers in the Attic. People love to be shocked. And this is a book with nothing but horrible things befalling our 'beautiful' heroine with no bright light ahead of her. It seems that all of the good guys in VCA books are beautiful and most of the bad guys are ugly. And did I mention the rape scenes were absolutely disgusting?

I rest my case...

Well, here we come to the last book about the Cutlers, and it's told by the evil granny. Who, as is the tradition in V.C. Andrews books, was not quite so evil in her youth, so she has a right to narrate a story.
Actually, this is a little weird. If you've read the previous books in this series, you'll probably know that the evil granny (or Lilian, as she is called here), isn't actually related to Dawn or Christie. Or is she? Because this is the prequel, and we've already found out a lot of shocking secrets about who's related to who in the last four books. Is it possible that there could be one last, horrible secret that would change the way the readers look at, say, Dawn and Jimmy's marriage? Well?
As it turns out, no. The only horrible secret revealed that wasn't mentioned in the other books is something to do with Lilian's parentage. Which doesn't really impact on anything that happened in the other books. Erm.
But there's always an advantage to these "narrated by the evil granny" books, and that is the fact that they're set in the past, so there's an excuse for the prudery and daffyness. It would sound a bit strange for a modern-day mother to tell her daughter that only "loose women" like to show off their cleavage, but in a 1930s (I'm guessing) mother, it makes sense. As do the swoony-true love-fairy tale parts. They should set these books in the past more often- they're better at it.
Finally, there's the part where poor old Lilian's sickly mother and sister, pervy father, religious fundamentalist sister and not-particularly-agile boyfriend set up a series of events that ruins her life. And I can't think of a better author when it comes to writing melodramatic life ruination. It's when these books get dark, gruesome and miserable that they're at their cheesy best.

Some of what was written could have been left out. Like Lillian's first day at school and the description of the shoes, being locked away in a shed and etc. None of that was remotely interesting! The GhostWriter(GW) should have picked up the story after what Lillian's "father" did to her and the result of it. Then went to Lillian meeting Bill Cutler and so forth. I was looking for the famous fight between Lillian and Laura Sue that seemed to be the main focus of in Dawn for it played a huge chunk in the events that twisted Dawn's life. But the ending is rushed to a fast conclusion.

I wanted this: To know more about her life at the hotel, her first thoughts about Dawn's mother, Randolph meeting Laura Sue for the first time, the fight that took place, Lillian plotting Dawn's fate, her feelings on how what she did to a young baby would affect her, if she had moments of doubts, how she could so easily move on with her life after doing so, the obvivious fight she had with Bill upon finding out what he had done, her feelings then. That is what is missing from these books written by the ghostwriter. The impact of the book to pull you in like no novel has done before and tug at your heartstrings.

Overall, I give this book 4 and a half stars for Lillian has some pretty good replys to arrogrant Bill Cutler that will leave you laughing.

I thought this book was one of the best in the series. It was just one of those books that you can't put down. I have read all of the V. C. Andrews books and I thought the Cutler series was the best.

This is another great VC Andrews book where basically good vs. evil. However, in this book, it didn't seem that good won out. We did however get a good look into the life of grandmother Culter who we met in the first two Cutler novels and get some back ground on her life. Why she became who she was...

It was a very good read, giving us readers a chance to actually get to like grandmother Cutler- who we all hated previously. There are moments in this novel that are so horrifying, you will be shocked. The whole time I was reading, I just wanted to get to the end and reach the conclusion I was waiting for.

Overall I enjoyed the Cutler series. I'd recommend it to teenagers and adults alike, if you like a good juicy, fun read.