A review by jacqui_des
Seeds of Yesterday by V.C. Andrews

3.0

2023 Re-Read: Downgraded to 3 stars
This was by far the most absurd book of the series, which is saying a lot. Why would you move into an exact replica of the house that caused you so much pain? And why would you continue to endure two of the characters that cause so much grief?

Memorable Quotes

"I told myself that not all blue eyes were cruel and heartless. Certainly I should know that better than anyone."

"Bart drove with reckless, daredevil speed, as if challenging death to take him."

"God knows he should have better sense," Chris grumbled. "He's always been accident prone—and look at the way he drives, as if he's got a hold on immortality."

"The world no longer tolerates great houses and great wealth, or respects those who gain it by inheritance."

"To be in love is like turning on a light in a dark room. All of a sudden everything becomes bright and visible. You're never alone because she loves you, and you love her."

"I wondered if ever again they'd transform an ordinary little girl into someone full of fanciful dreams she had to make come true. And I had made a few come true, even if I'd failed more than once to keep husbands alive."

"Blame the wind or stars of fate—but I still blamed my mother."

"In the middle of the bedroom we shared, Chris and I reached for each other. There we stood, wrapped in each other's arms, holding fast to the only security we ever had that lasted: each other."

"Like father, like son, like father like son beat the unhappy tattoo of the drums of fear in my head."

"Who ever counted the flowers that died when we pulled up the weeds?"

"We recreate ourselves through love."

"Only weak-chinned men should hide behind beards."

"We float on wings of sensuality so powerful nobody can realize as we do the pain of all that's so insensitive and cruel and brutal in reality."

"I've been in medicine too long not to know justice isn't doled out equally. The good often die before the bad. Children die before grandparents, and who is to say that's right? But what can we do about it? Life is a gift, and perhaps death is another kind of gift."

"How adaptable we humans were, how willing to suffer through any horror, any adjustment, any deprivations, just to gain those few minutes of priceless joy."

"I surrendered to the only love in my life that had lasted long enough to let me know I had a firm grip on happiness . . . despite everything that could have ruined what we had cultivated and grown in the shade."

"On a night like this the drunks were out, deadlier than arsenic."

"You established his brain patterns long before he was born. Out of hatred came the child. And out of need comes the angel of salvation. Think of that before you condemn me."

"I'd look up and admire the wonder of the trees that never seemed depressed or lonely. Nature—how much we could learn if only we would."

"It's an evil house, and now I hate its spirit just as much as once I loved its beauty."

"And with that we surrendered to each other, forgetting our problems in the ecstasy we knew so well how to create."

"If he keeps it up I think I may well end up hating him, and I don't want that to happen. We had something so beautiful between us in the beginning. I want to keep that special time like a flower I can press between the pages of my memory."

"Turn around, and the boy you knew so well was a man."

"Someday you are going to understand about love, Bart. You are going to find out it doesn't come because you want it, or need it. It's yours only when you earn it. It comes to you when you least expect it, walks in the door and closes it quietly and when it's right, it stays. You don't plot to find it. Or seduce to try and make it happen. You have to deserve it, or you'll never have anyone who will stay long enough."

"For my father had been a wonderful man, and that hadn't mattered. Fate didn't choose the unloved, the derelicts, the unneeded or unwanted. Fate was a bodiless form with a cruel hand that reached out randomly, carelessly, and seized up with ruthlessness."