Customer Reviews

Melody Hb (Logan)

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

While Melody wasn't as good as the Casteel, Cutler, and Dollanganger series, it was still a good read, and a decent series. Melody has a lot of enemies, and secrets to contend with, but she shows to be a fine young lady with a good backbone, and was overall a good heroine in face of what she had to deal with.

This is the last series that Mr. Neiderman, the ghostwriter for VCA, put any real effort into. If you're interested in reading V.C. Andrews, only buy the Logan series or any of the series that came before it.

A year after first reading `Melody' she is still fresh in my mind as arguably VC Andrews' most likeable heroines. She is not obsessed with sex, money, or fame. Her only fault is being too caring for people.

Although the story is formulaic it is more "realistic" than any other Andrews' family saga. Some characters are evil but few are down right psychotic. No one gets locked in the attic or tortured. The focal conflict is the family tree being more twisted than ever. Even by VCA standards the Logan family tree is the most complicated yet! This provides for even more incest.

The VC Andrews formula is aliped to Melody Logan a gorgeous 15 year West Virginian with "flaxen blonde hair and cerulean blue eyes." Her family is poor but happy living in trailer park with her parents Haille and Chester until Chester dies in a coal mining accident.

The now snobby and neglectful Haille and her lover Richard travel to Cape Cod to reunite with the other Logans whom shunned them. Melody is shocked that she is simply abandoned to live with family members she has never met before as Haille and Richard take off for Hollywood.

The middle class Logan household is depressed due to the recent death of beloved daughter Laura whom recently drowned. She was Melody's exact double. There is mean and nasty Uncle Jacob, wimpy Aunt Sara, Laura's cold twin brother Cary, and young deaf May. Melody is set to fill Laura role occupying her room and possessions.

The Logan home is cold hearted but not down right psycho or abusive. At school Melody is also bullied. Weekends are spent at Grandmother Olivia's (we're running out of names for evil grandmothers) mansion where she is the nastiest Logan yet.

There, Melody learns of Haille's disgrace. She was the only daughter of Olivia's promiscuous sister Belinda whom Olivia raised as her own. Hence Haille and Chester were foster brother and sister and biological first cousins. But Chester was not her biological father. Haille was so promiscuous his identity is unknown but her former fiancé Kenneth Childs is a prime suspect.

Melody is also shocked to learn at school that Cary and Laura were rumored to have and incestuous relationship. They attended all social functions as dates.

In the misery of her new home Melody is eventually able to find some happiness as she investigates and befriends her suspected father, an eccentric artist. She is also able to be the big sister to May and daughter to Sara that Laura would have been and to Cary the... well I won't give anything away but I promise you more incest than any other VC Andrews series.

There are also more family secrets than any other series. Who is Melody's real father? What was Cary and Laura's true relationship? And what character come back from the dead. I promise these questions continue to haunt the reader throughout the series as they are not answered until the very end. It keeps you very intrigued.

The first three Logan books, `Melody' `Heart Song' and `Unfinished Symphony' really read all as one as they take place in a very short period of time and focus on the same 3 mysteries I just mentioned.

The Logan series remains one of my favorite as Melody is very likeable. She does not become focused on sex and money and she is eager to help those in need. The twisted family tree provides for more incest than I ever thought possible. And several of them are far more intense than typical VCA. Where as with many VCA books we wonder how or why the sibling fell in love the Logan series provides us with an explanation.

The fourth book `Music in the Night' is also heart stopping as it is told from Laura's point of view and many mysteries we've been dying to know from the beginning are finally answered.

The fifth book `Olivia' is a complete waste, no new secrets are revealed! It focuses solely on Olivia and Belinda and what evil witches they were. Unlike Olivia Foxworth she is not even an interesting villain. A better prequel would have been about Haille and her trials growing up hated.

I hope the editors are reading this! whoever the ghostwriter is needs to get a new plot. Before the story begins you can almost guess that an "evil" father or stepfather has committent incest or rape. The negative stereotypes of women also need to cease. Either she's beautiful and vain or she's beautiful and innocent, no in betweens. There are no plain and smart women, those women are always jealous and spiteful. No caring women who are strong enough to fight back and stand up to these evil men! Hardly any of the "heroines" go to college. I am tired of the brothers liking sisters and so forth. Really, people are tired of the same old bull! If the ghostwriter going to create an interesting plot, they should start with adding more diversity. Please make it more complex. What happened to the sad, but sweet endings, like the first & second series? What happened to the heart wrenching storylines? The ones that just made you want to cry. And what happened to the plot that made you feel as though you were witnessing these events? The mystery and fire is no more.Flowers in the Attic was breath-taking because it broke new ground, and it had twists and turns. It was not sophomoric like this novel and the terrible Wildflowers series. All the novels after Dawn, have become to much of a formula. The only reason I read these books anymore is the hope that they will get better.

Can you imagine growing up with only your father and mother as the only realives you have ever known? Well, in V.C. Andrews novel Melody, that is what happens to the main character. Melody, the main character, looses her father in a mining accident. Right after the funeral Melody's mother decided to pack up and move. What Melody doesn't know is that her mother wants to leave Melody with her aunt and uncle whom she has never met. Melody is not happy about leaving her friends behind, but she goes on and moves with her mother. While Melody is living with her aunt and uncle, she begins to wonder why they have not kept in contact with her father and mother. Melody also begins to question why they don't want her to ever mention her father's name. When Melody finds out the answer, she is not happy with it. But can she live with responsibility?

This novel is a pleasure to read. It makes one wonder how much they really know about their families. It also teaches you to never judge anyone because sometimes you don't always know the whole story. I think that anyone who enjoys Andrews' books should read this one. It would help if the reader is a little mature about some aspects of life.

I have read many of V.C. Andrews books. I have to say that this book and the rest of the series is my favorite. Some of her stories can be redundant, but with this book I found that I was always turning the pages, and it kept me up all night. This book gives you a chilling story of a young girl who only wants the family she had, but is faced with the reality that she must deal with the life that her mother forces on her. She is forced to live with her father's family that seems to hate her because of her parents you get this since of really how strongly tied you are to your family. You also see a great friendship form and develop over the whole series. This book is chilling, but at the same time gives you a happy story of girl who makes the best with what she has.

This book takes place during the 1960s? I've seen other reviews that describe Melody as a girl of the 1990s. However, on page 130 (in the paperback version), there was reference to The Beatles. On page 205, Adam Jackson tells Melody how all the other girls talk, saying everything is "groovy". Nobody talks like that in the 90s. In the book "Unfinished Symphony", on page 80, Spike talks about taking Melody to see Grauman's Chinese Theater. It was no longer called that in the 1990s. It had been changed to Mann's Chinese theater by then. If the ghost writer was trying to convey that "Melody" took place during the 60s, then he screwed up majorly in writing "Olivia". Melody's "grandmother" wouldn't have been watching TV as a teenager. Maybe not even if "Melody" took place in the 90s. Although I did enjoy reading this book, I didn't give it any more stars because I found the timeline rather confusing. Was it the 60s? The 90s? Who knows?

This is a somewhat interesting, first person account by a fifteen-year old female named (you guessed it) Melody. Her last name is Logan.

This is my first experience with V. C. Andrews, and since this book was published after Andrews died, I assume it was actually written by her "ghostwriter."

The book did hold my interest, and I looked forward to returning to it after putting it down.

Melody seems almost too moral to be real, but she does loosen up a little toward the end (she begins to tell "white lies"). Her mother, Haille Logan, seems almost too selfish to be real, and Haille's early death in a car accident in Pomona, California, seems almost too convenient.

Melody's Provincetown cousin, Cary Logan, seems too righteous to be real. Some of the other student's nickname him "grandpa," because he acts like someone very mature and older. Others, however, think he's the "wisest" of them all.

Melody loses her "daddy" in a coal mining accident in West Virginia, and her mother then drops her with her aunt and uncle in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where fishing for lobsters is the family business.

The novel follows her adjustment to her new setting, as she rubs shoulders with her various family scions, her cousins, her schoolmates, and a few local bystanders.

Her younger cousin, May, is deaf, and uses sign language to communicate. This stimulated my interest in sign language, and deaf people in general. I hope to learn that language, although, unlike Melody, I have no one to practice with at the moment.

The story is somewhat a mystery, the kind, I gather, most Andrews fans are already familiar with. I'm not a teenager (by a long shot), but since the protagonist is, I assume many teens will get a kick out of this book. So will adults, if they like stories that move along, are not too difficult to read, and help pass the time.

Diximus.

Though Laura's story seems like it was set during the late 1950's and early 1960's (when America was more innocent, like Laura), "Melody" (and its subsequent sequels) seem to be set during the late 1960's, early 1970's, even though Melody's story begins only about a year after Laura's ends.

I had read this series years ago, then believing this series marked the beginning of the decline of V.C.'s legacy, though it wasn't until I re-read this, and then read "Willow" that I realized at least the Logan series mirrored some of V.C.'s (the real V.C.'s) earlier work, but devoid of characters I could either relate to or care about.

I didn't like Melody (the character). She was whiny (what fifteen-year-old girl still refers to her mother as Mommy?), and so incredibly stupid. She was almost raped three times, all three totally preventable if she had just used some common sense (I am including all three Melody books in this review because each book is simply a continuation and not worthy of a separate write-up).

The first almost-rape: Adam Jackson. Melody had already heard about what he was about, and she agrees to meet him on the beach...alone!

The second almost-rape: Melody runs away from Cape Cod (where, despite her Uncle Jacob's gruffness, she has it pretty good), manages to get her money stolen, so she has to hitchhike part of the way back to Sewell, West Virginia (where she was from), and gets in a van with this creepy hippie who, of course, tries to rape her.

The third almost-rape: Melody's selfish mother, Haille, ran off with this bottom-feeder named Archie/Richard Marlin, when Melody's father/stepfather, Chester, dies in a coal-mining accident. Knowing the kind of guy Archie is, Melody agrees to live with him and her mother (who, of course, aren't married), because Melody has deluded herself into believing her precious Mommy is under some kind of spell Archie has put her under. So, you have Perp (or should I save Perv) #3.

What never made sense to me was why didn't Haille just abandon her daughter and do her thing fifteen years ago? I never got the impression that she was ever in love with Chester (which would have explained why she stuck around being his wife and taking care of her kid), especially since she started screwing Archie practically right after Chester's wake.

That said, Melody believes Kenneth Childs (the local artist on the Cape) is her father, but once she finds out he isn't, she starts to like him in a biblical way, and I thought that was totally weird. It was like Dawn and Jimmy growing up as brother and sister for years, and then hooking up once they found out they really weren't. What's more, Melody poses for Kenneth (the fact that she poses nude for him makes it creepy, considering they do turn out to be related--I won't say how), and pouts when Kenneth doesn't show any interest in being her lover just because he's seen her breasts. How immature! Not to mention she is sort of dating Cary (who really isn't her cousin after all). Their lovemaking was all sugar and no spice (in other words, boring), just as the sex (I won't call it lovemaking) between Haille and sleazeball Archie was primitive and gross.

Haille could have been a much more interesting character, but the GW demonized her so much, she became a caricature rather than a real person, so had there been a prequel written about her (but then there wasn't--rather we have another Olivia story), I would have had no interest because of what I knew she would become. Haille wasn't just a woman with faults, but a pretty piece of white trash.

Though I did enjoy these easy reads, I wasn't enthralled with dynamic characters (of which sweet, deaf little May was probably the best in a lackluster cast), and the characters resonate with me long after the story ends. These people did not.

I've read Melody before, and I just read it again to remember exactly why I think the GWs books are such rip-off VC originals. When VC was alive, she wrote with passion and sincerity.

I find repeated lines in the newer books, such as this one. The overuse of similies annoy me to no end as well, and I quote "We were alike, Cary and I, haunted by lies and sadness, two sailbats drifting, looking for a friendly wind" or "Like the beacon in a storm, the light from those memories held out a tiny spark of hope". Who talks like that? A few similies and metaphors are fine, but it's nonstop in this book.

The main character, Melody, is quite naive for a fifteen year old girl who supposedly gets straight As. How could she not know that hitchhiking is a bad idea? And though the author tried to portray her as a "strong woman" she was constantly feeling sorry for herself and moping. Yes, she had reason, but she was not the herione she was made out to be.

Cary was just strange and boring. His obsession with his sister seemed odd when it was mentioned. Why did he care so much that she had a boyfriend? I understand protectivness, but please.

Other than that, it wasn't too bad. Read it if your into the GWs work.

To be honest, this was a book I grabbed in a mad dash to get as many books as possible at the local library $0.25 per book sale. This is not a book that I would usually find to read, but boy was I ever glad I got it. For weeks, I left this book sitting on the bookshelf collecting dust, and when I finally started it, I could NOT put it down! This book left me screaming for more in the series and I highly recommend this to everyone!