A short novella building background and expanding on the characters in the Bittersweet Dreams book, this was a very quick read. The story line pulls you in...young people so intelligent they are pulled out of everyday life into a school designed just for them. But teenagers are the same whether smart or not. Curfews and rules are broken when the main characters leave school to visit the nearby town. And of course, consequences follow. The book is well written and the story will keep your interest. There is no clear ending so a reader would assume another book will follow.

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Erica – ☆☆☆☆
Spindrift, the fourth installment of the Girls of Spindrift series, as well as the prequel to Bittersweet Dreams (which I have not read yet). The novella cannot be read as a standalone.

In this installment, the novella is shared by our previous narrators: Corliss, Donna, and Mayfair, featuring the aftermath of the events that took place during Mayfair.

Spindrift is a school for those beyond what we would see as geniuses. While they are smarter than most people on the planet, the girls are still subject to the human condition – mistakes, hormones, puberty, emotion, and human nature. The girls have a difficulty rationalizing something that isn't rational – emotions and emotional needs, no matter how highly intuitive they may be.

Mayfair is AWOL, with Corliss and Donna figuring out where she may be, then taking the responsibility for their irresponsible actions.

The novella had a finite feeling – as if it was to be left open-ended.

Just an observation: the prologue and the first chapter are only seconds apart in a linear timeline, so I was unsure why there was a prologue at all. This had me thinking there was a time jump, when it took place the same night and the day after the events taking place in Mayfair, the earlier portions of the novella parallel in time with the ending of Mayfair. While the epilogue is an indeterminate time in the future, there being a prologue made zero sense and gave me confusion on determining the timeline.

Recommended to fans of the author – yes, the earliest novels were written by Virginia Andrews, but her name has become a brand, not a singular identity. While I don't have the info on whether or not it has always been the same author(s) since, I will state the continuity of the writing across this series most certainly feels as if written by a singular author who respects the brand and the voice.

Young Adult age-rating: 12+

Very good book. Loved the characters and world building! There were a few moments where I found the story to be moving a long a little slow, but they definitely didn't last very long. Definitely a to-buy!

Very satisfying ending. Really enjoyed these novellas and the interesting concept behind them. All in all a great read.

Spindrift is the story of Mayfair, Corliss, and Donna who become friends at their school for the gifted. After the girls find an unknown escape from the school grounds , Mayfair meets a mysterious guy and takes off with him without telling her friends . After Mayfair doesn’t return the girls have no choice but to tell the head mistress what they know and they all face getting kicked out together.
I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

Spindrift was my favorite of the four books in the Girls of Spindrift series. Yes, I actually enjoyed it better than the individual books--Donna, Corliss, and Mayfair--written about each of the main characters.

Though short, I felt Spindrift was a good way to end the series. To me, the girls were actually treated more like young adults than just students. It touched on emotions and their feelings, giving them a say about what they really wanted. The incident with Mayfair and Leo was perfect and I thought it gave the series a bit of depth that had been lacking in the individual books.

It's hard to have a modern day VC Andrews story without being corny--let's face it, things Andrews wrote about when she was still alive wouldn't be accepted to easily in today's times--so I think it was a pretty good series, one that young adults would find interesting.

*ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

I grew up reading VC Andrews books. This one just didn't do it for me. The story was short, and underdeveloped.

In this, the conclusion to the Girls of Spindrift series we find out what happened to teenager, Mayfair. In a previous book she left the school she and her friends went to for the highly intelligent. There was a hole in the fence and her she and her friends were able to sneak off to town unknown to the staff and experience life a bit since no socializing with boys was allowed at the school. These teens may have had superior intelligence to even adults but had the common sense of regular teens.
A must read if you are a fan of V.C. Andrew books.
Pub Date 24 Sep 2018
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books through NetGalley. Thank you. All opinions expressed are my own.

Hmm… Where to begin? As with many an avid reader, there’s a special kind of nostalgia I get when returning to books or authors I’ve read as a child. V.C. Andrews was one of those authors I read in that in-between space, when I had already exhausted such fare as A Wrinkle in Time, and was looking for something edgier, but wasn’t quite ready to make the leap to adult or literary fiction. Having already established my affinity for all things macabre or off-center, I was drawn to the gothic tales woven in My Sweet Audrina and Flowers in the Attic, and even more satisfying was the fact that I was the only child in 5th or 6th grade reading such disturbing material, which I happily recounted to my soft-stomached schoolmates.

Given this backstory, I was excited when given the opportunity to read an advance copy of the newest offering by Andrews, Spindrift, about a group of young women who attend an elite academy, only to have one go missing. Gothic mystery fiction, female protagonist(s), academia, and one of my favorite childhood authors– what could be better?

Turns out, A LOT.

This book is not well written. It’s messily-plotted, the characters are superficial, with little to no depth, and there’s hardly a phrase worth re-reading, so clunky and utilitarian is the language. There’s nothing of the sexy gothic mystery, that stomach-churning feeling I so vividly recall from my previous experiences reading V.C. Andrews. And don’t even get me started on the inherent (and accidental) irony of calling this series “The Burden of Brilliance”. You might expect, given that title, the book would be oh-so-clever. And you’d be sorely disappointed. I didn’t even want to bother writing a review, such was my dismay. And then I had a realization:

Hadn’t V.C. Andrews died before I was even born? How was she creating more work?

Turns out, she wasn’t.

This book isn’t written by V.C. Andrews at all– which is perhaps the most interesting part of the whole story here. Andrews herself died in 1986. Thirty-two years ago. So now you’re thinking “okay, that’s not weird at all. There are plenty of books posthumously published, plenty of tertiary pieces that remained hidden in a desk drawer, and perhaps this was just one of her lesser works, only recently discovered”. But no, that’s not what’s going on here.

This is a case of ghostwriting, with an emphasis on the ghost part.

Turns out, an author called Andrew Neiderman has been ghostwriting for V.C. Andrews, cashing in on her likeness for years, both on paper and on screen. Neiderman is best known for writing The Devil’s Advocate, which went on to be a widely popular film, though it’s widely regarded as being one of the few films that is better than its original material. I can’t help but feel a bit disgusted by this trickery, not only because it’s a little gross that a publisher would conspire to pass off work that is not Andrews’ herself, but because the writer they chose pales in comparison to Andrews. I have so many questions: when there are so many talented authors out there, why choose someone so subpar?

And more importantly, WHY THE EFF would you choose an older, male writer to ghostwrite for a woman who is known for writing feminine stories, from the perspective of young women, for an audience of young women?

Gross.

Spindrift is the fourth book of the Girls of Spindrift series by V.C. Andrews. The series is a set of novellas that are a spin off series to the book Bittersweet Dreams which has already been published. I have not yet read Bittersweet Dreams myself but I don’t believe it would necessary to have done so to understand the novellas, it seems to be mainly some character building for what would be in Bittersweet Dreams.

The first three novellas in the series introduced Corliss, Donna and Mayfair as they joined the exclusive Spindrift School that is for the extremely gifted. These girls never fit into their lives being well above their peers in school and testing off the charts and now they have found each other and began to bond and become friends. While the girls are out jogging they find a way under the fence and into a small town near the school and decide to explore.

While in town the girls met an older boy who introduced himself as Leo. Corliss and Donna both suspected there was just something off with Leo and didn’t trust him talking Mayfair into returning to Spindrift. However Mayfair decided to sneak back out on her own to meet Leo and now the girls need to find her fast or come clean with the school about their escape into town.

Being novella length I’m sure you’ll all expect my usual the story is good but there isn’t a lot of depth. I really don’t mind with these as it’s more nostalgia to dip into the haunting lives that live within the pages of a V.C. Andrews novella. And yes, I’m well aware along with most anyone that V.C. herself passed away years ago and these are actually written by her ghostwriter, Andrew Neiderman.

There are some out there who 1 star every book coming out without ever giving them a chance, however I’m not one of those and actually like trying these out. While some stories written since her passing were really terrible some of them aren’t too bad and good for that trip into the past occasionally. The Girls of Spindrift is one that I don’t find that bad at all, not award winning but good to pass an hour.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read this fabulous ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As always, VC Andrews' books are quick read. It's easy to identify yourself with these characters. However, I am disappointed that it's such a short story. The story could be a little more developed on how these characters would do out of Spindrift and onward.