My Sweet Audrina

My Sweet Audrina is a novel by the American writer V. C. Andrews, published in 1982. It was the only stand-alone novel published during her lifetime, and its story is set in the mid-Atlantic states in the 1960s and 1970s.

Audrina Adare says she is seven when the book begins, though it becomes clear later that her memory is unreliable. She lives at Whitefern, a Victorian-era mansion near the fictional River Lyle, with her father Damian, her mother Lucietta, her aunt Ellsbeth and her cousin Vera. The household takes care to keep exact dates from her, including the date of her own birthday, even though she knows she was born on the ninth of September, and she is often confused about how much time has passed. Vera mocks her for being insane, while her father believes that she walks in her own time space.

What Audrina is told is that nine years before her birth her elder sister, also called Audrina and also born on the ninth of September, was raped and murdered in the woods on her ninth birthday. Her father tells her stories about his first and best Audrina and sets about convincing the daughter he has that she can recover her sister's memories through a process of self-hypnosis. The novel takes in brittle bone disease, rape, post-traumatic stress and diabetes, and it is the story of a girl working out what actually happened to her family.