Secrets of the Morning

Secrets of the Morning is a 1991 novel by V. C. Andrews and the second book in the Cutler family series, published by Pocket Books. It follows Dawn from the events of the first volume into a new life in New York City, where she is a student at a music school.

The singing career she has wanted is within reach, and the book keeps her past close to the surface: she still thinks about Jimmy, the boyfriend she left behind, and about the secrets the two of them carry. Then Michael Sutton arrives as a teacher, a professional singer and the object of her attention, and the relationship that follows gives her a period of intense feeling before he disappears.

What the disappearance leaves behind is a return to the position she started in. Dawn is alone with the consequences of what she has been told and what she has believed, and her grandmother's plans for her resume as a result, which is the shape the Cutler books work in: a family whose arrangements survive the people who try to escape them. Andrews published the series in the early 1990s, and it follows the same method as her earlier novels, with the household and its secrets doing the work of the horror.