Web of Dreams

Web of Dreams was written in 1990 by Andrew Neiderman, the ghostwriter who continued the V. C. Andrews novels after her death, and it is the fifth and final novel in the Casteel series and a prequel to Heaven.

The novel is told mainly from the point of view of Heaven Casteel's mother, Leigh VanVoreen, and it explains the secrets and the circumstances that led a thirteen-year-old girl to flee her wealthy Boston home, die in childbirth and leave her daughter to be raised in the hills of West Virginia. The opening returns to Farthinggale Manor for the funeral of Troy Tatterton, and the narrative then works back to Leigh's own account. Leigh's mother will not believe her and her stepfather has betrayed her, which is why the offer of Luke Casteel's devotion is presented as the only one she has. The Casteel series follows the family across five volumes, and this last of them closes the sequence by returning to the mother's story.

The Casteel books are domestic rather than supernatural. As a prequel, the book explains rather than reveals, and it is the reason the series can be read in either order.