YMMV / Casteel Series

aka: The Casteel Series

• Aborted Arc: The introduction of Heaven's mother's portrait doll is established in the prologue of the very first book, and it seems that it's going to play a major role in proving her identity to her Boston grandparents. The doll's destroyed, but the grandparents accept Heaven anyway. In Dark Angel, it seems the doll is going to come back into play when Heaven asks Tony if a portrait doll was ever made for Leigh, and he lies to her. The reason why he lied is never revealed, and Heaven never even expresses any further curiosity about it after that scene. For the next two books, the doll goes unmentioned and Heaven dies without ever learning the truth or indeed mentioning it again. It's only in the prequel that we find out the deal with the doll.
• Contested Sequel: Heaven and Dark Angel are well loved by fans, but there's a split on whether or not the other three books are any good.
• Heartwarming Moments: Troy going to Heaven's high school graduation in Dark Angel, along with several Tatterton Toys employees and their families acting like the Casteels since her actual family couldn't (or wouldn't) be there for her.
  • From Fallen Hearts, Troy building a music box replica of the cottage at Farthy for Heaven, complete with figurines of them in a loving pose.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Many V. C. Andrews fans hold the first two books as her best, but her personal favorite story was the posthumously published and obscure Gods of Green Mountain (at least according to the letter by her brothers at the beginning of that book)
• Moral Event Horizon: Luke selling his children, which Heaven found to be unforgivable.
  • Tony repeatedly raping Leigh, who was not only his stepdaughter but either 13 or 14 at the time.
  • Jillian knew what was going on between Tony and Leigh, but chose to ignore it so that she wouldn't be stressed. And in Web of Dreams she even used Leigh as a distraction for Tony so that he wouldn't want to have sex with Jillian, and then got angry at Leigh when she became pregnant.
• Replacement Scrappy: For more than a few readers, Annie was this for her mother Heaven. The readers that did dislike her found her to be much more whiny than Heaven, to the point that even fans that liked Gates of Paradise found that she bogged the story down.
• The Scrappy: Logan Stonewall isn't too popular with fans due to his reactions to Heaven's traumas (including outright ignoring her when she tries to track him down in Boston). He, along with Arden Lowe, are one of the more unpopular characters in the Andrews catalog.
• Tainted by the Preview: The announcement of the film version of Heaven had fans excited... until it was confirmed that Lifetime was producing. Fans, who were dismayed at their treatments of the Dollanganger series and especially My Sweet Audrina, were not pleased.
• Tearjerker: Tom's Heroic Sacrifice in Dark Angel. And unlike Troy, he's dead for real.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Even at his worst, it seems that Andrews on some level wants you to sympathize with Luke, which at times is rather... difficult. He's supposedly the way he is because of losing Leigh (whom he cheated on), but he wasted no time finding another wife, whom he treats even worse and is all but nonexistent to his children (except when he's abusing them) and generally seems to be constantly self involved. Even when he's cleaned his act up, he does nothing for Fanny, even though she's at this point had her child taken away, is prostituting herself for money etc. His letting Tom live with him and his new wife is presented as heroic because otherwise Tom would have had to stay with his abusive foster family, except he made Tom give up his life long dream of pursuing an education so he could pursue his dream of opening a circus which results in Tom getting mauled to death by a lion and lets not forget that he sent Heaven to two families that he knew contained at least one abusive adult i.e. Kitty Dennison and Tony Tatterton, Leigh's rapist. So, yeah poor guy...
  • Except he gave Heaven the choice to go to two families both times (the first time with a stuffy older couple alongside the Dennisons, the second time with either her Boston grandmother or with the family he was making with his new wife and Tom). She made the choice to go with the Dennisons because Kitty reminded her of Sarah and decided to go to Jillian and Tony to know more about her mother and why she left.
  • This also might depend on whether you consider the ghostwritten books canon. There's no way to tell if Andrews herself ever intended for Luke to know that Tony raped Leigh or if this was something the ghostwriter retconned when he took over the series.
  • Yes she chose to live both families, but Heaven didn't know how bad they were until it was too late. Luke knew though and if he had any decency he would have told her or at least given her an idea of what she was in for!
• The Woobie: Let's face it all of the Casteel children fit this trope to a T. Things lighten up a lot for Our Jane and Keith. Tom, Heaven and Fanny... not so much.
  • Troy's story is enough to make anyone tear up. His parents had him very late in life to the point that Tony was already practically an adult so by the time Troy was about three years old, both his parents were dead and Tony was the closest he had to a father. Then Jillian and Leigh came into the picture with the former being a Wicked Stepmother of a sister-in-law because she doesn't know how to handle boys (or children in general) and the latter being the perfect big sister who leaves after she's raped by Tony. For several years until Heaven shows up, Troy is sick and melancholic with the fear that he'll die young except despite two instances of Faking the Dead, he outlives Leigh, Jillian, his true love Heaven, and his brother Tony before dying of natural causes after becoming a grandfather.
  • Though she later becomes a Jerkass Woobie, Sarah definitely deserves a hug. Besides the aforementioned Nightmare Fuel she endures, she's really led quite a crappy existence: living in abject poverty with a cheating, abusive husband who has made it plain that she's the consolation prize to his first true love, scratching to feed and clothe five children and two invalid adults, and all the while still holding out hope that one day her husband will love her. Added to the nasty postnatal depression she is left with and complete lack of emotional support she receives (and certainly no medical attention) after her final child is born dead and severely deformed, is it any wonder the poor woman loses it?
  • Let's not forget Leigh: her mother suddenly divorces her father who isn't actually her father, and then her stepfather raped her, resulting in pregnancy barely into her teens, and then she dies in childbirth.
  • Time has changed general opinion of Fanny to that of a Jerkass Woobie, who, while she is often awful to those around her, is at heart only acting out of limited understanding, frustration, and genuine need born from a life of deprivation, while her hurtful promiscuity stems from a desperate need to be loved. She's never had anything, and doesn't know how to seek better, and now she's so toxic that no one can risk getting close enough to teach her how to change. That at several points in the books, she breaks down and reveals a deep capacity to care for her family tends to bear out that there's a Woobie under the Jerkass somewhere.
• Yo Yo Plot Point: At some point, you just gotta ask yourself how many generations of Jillian's descendants is Tony going to rape?