Ik this is a very old book but this is my first time reading it and oh my god. I know a lot of people read it when they were 10-13 but I’m so glad I read it at 23 because man is this book so disturbing. I was about to understand every dark aspect that was happening but that donut plottwist fucked me up. I really want to read the series but not sure if it’s worth reading it because I don’t want it to drag on. I’m so mad that Cathy didn’t get revenge. I wanted revenge so badly for the whippings for the attempted murder and murder of Cory! It hurt me so much when Cory died. If anything I need a mother POV cause fuck her for real. To just forget her kids for money is insane to me. Why not give them money and tell them to stay away? Like at least let them have a life even if she didn’t want them in hers. Also the rape/insect was new to me to read and it just AHHHH I feel so bad for them because they only had each other, I don’t think that would have happened if they weren’t kept together 24/7 for 3 years. I’m just posting about it now because I don’t know anyone who has read it to talk about it with.
by Suchcreativity08
23 Comments
I’ve heard that it was a very controversial book when it came out
I’m one of those who read it as a preteen. It’s been a very long time since I read the sequels but I found them pretty subpar compared to the first book. That said, if you enjoyed Flowers in the Attic, I’d recommend My Sweet Audrina, which is possibly even more disturbing.
I think my whole generation of girls read that as young teens,or preteens.
was still kinda unnerved when my daughter had a copy when she was 13.
I still re read it on e in a while.
I still can’t eat powdered donuts. And yeah i read it and the sequels in like 6th grade lol
It’s been nearly 30 years since I’ve read it, but I was definitely among those that was addicted to VC Andrews at way too young an age to be reading that stuff. I read probably most of her books. They all follow a similar trajectory, so I’d say for you, one is probably more than enough. I do recall that my favorite series was the Heaven (Casteel) series. I can almost feel what it was like to be 12/13 in the mid 90s was when I think about it. I can almost smell that time period of my life lol. Like the way my house smelled, the air in the morning while walking to the school bus… anyway, that’s neither here nor there, I just got lost in a moment of the past.
But yeah, all of her books center around an orphaned or abandoned child(ren), severe abuse/SA at the hands of at least one of the new guardians, incest or other inappropriate relationship, and then there is usually a moment of triumph for the female protagonist. Overcoming the abuse, divine justice, rags to riches… and all that. I remember realizing the formula early on when reading them, but it didn’t stop me from reading all of them anyway. And I at least partially credit them for starting a life long love affair with books, even though I have no desire to ever pick up another VC Andrews book again.
I went from VC Andrews to Michael Crichton. I promise there is no incest in Jurassic Park lol. And that too was a blast to read, just in a totally different way.
I would have been around 11-12 when I first read it in the 80’s. I don’t think i appreciated how disturbing it was until later. Everyone my age read it.
I was pretty young when I read her books! I’ve enjoyed most of her series!
I wasn’t into those books but my friends were. At that time there was a sharp distinction between the kids section and the adult section in the library.
I was finished with the kids section by 12. Wandering the adult stacks, I found Aztec and the Godfather, Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series. Roald Dahl the Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.
We didn’t have the young adult section. We just jumped into adult content
Yep. I read like 50 VC Andrew’s books when I was in middle school. My poor brain.
Ah, when I was around 12ish my grandma and grandpa moved and she gave a ton of her books to me. This included so many VC Andrews books. It did open my mind to darker books though.
I will say I think the next two were okay, but then the series got really hard to get through, mainly bc it didn’t really do much more.
I agree about Sweet Audrina being the next if you enjoyed Flowers. It’s prolly her best one imo. The first two in the Heaven series I also remember enjoying. A lot of the VC Andrews books are ghostwritten and the quality is varyingly dubious. I think wikipedia has the ones by her and then the ghostwriter.
idk why but it’s a cannon event to read this series when you’re 11-13
Yessss!!!! I devoured VC Andrews when I was in middle school! The next book, Petals on the Wind, was my favorite in this series.
Mean Book Club podcast just recently did an episode on Flowers in the Attic, might be worth a listen. I love listening to them talk about books I’ve read!
Edit: actually, the Mean Book Club episode was from 2020! I got confused because I just recently relistened to it! Your Wrong About’s episode on the book IS recent (which inspired to be go back and listen to Mean Book Club book). Suffice to say, if you like listening to other people process books you’ve read, this one has been done a lot!
I remember getting into trouble for lending out my mothers books without her knowing and other parents finding . I think a lot of stuff I read in 80s/90s as a teen really messed up my perception of love/sex at the time . Better than todays teenagers looking at porn I suppose.
Yup!! The beginning of the book VC Andrews dedicates it to her mother. Which is weird given the subject matter UNTIL YOU FIND OUT that VC Andrews is severely physically disabled and her mother used to take away her wheelchair, lock a physically helpless Andrews in her room, and withhold food from her for days at a time as punishment. Suddenly her subject matters make a lot more sense
This is one of my favorite book series. Read it. Cathy gets her revenge eventually. And the story stays messed up!
Oh man when I was maybe 10 my mom and I watched the movie and then I checked out the book from the library. My mom had read it as a kid too. I still think about it and reread it occasionally. I loved the sequels too as a kid but haven’t reread those as an adult
Definitely read at least Petals on the Wind. I read up to Seeds of Yesterday back in late 2018/early 2019 and will finish the series whenever I reread. It just gets twistier and more fucked up.
I was addicted to the actual VC Andrews books. I was able to put myself in the character as a child with abandonment wounds & weird mother relationship. I could absolutely relate to the main character. The ghost writer ones are simply trash though. Can’t hardly read them.
I read this book when I was in 7th grade at 12 years old and I have never recovered. I went on to read like 10 VC Andrews books that year and they are all so insanely fucked up. I guess our parents just didn’t know what we were reading about?
I read VC Andrews when I was way too young, like middle/high school. I don’t know anything about her, but I always wondered why so many of her books centered around incest/abuse/SA. Was she using it as a sort of therapy for her own traumas? Did she recognize that true horror is often the stuff that happens IRL and so many women experience those traumas? Was she kind of a freak (like kinky freak)?
people often don’t believe me if they haven’t read it or if they have they forgot, but the scene where they drink blood to survive is one of the wildest I may have ever read
I read it when I was 8 or 9. I know this because I may or may not still have the book from the school library and that school was p to 4. This book was available in a public school library in a school where the highest grade was 4. Compare that to what folks are trying to ban kids from reading these days. Don’t get me wrong, looking back I think it’s pretty wild that it was available to us, and I wouldn’t want a kid of mine reading it at that age, however, I wasn’t exactly destroyed by it. I’m a functioning adult and only slightly disturbed.
I read the book at around 19, and loved it!
However, I feel that the part where >! Chris rapes Cathy !< didn’t age well! It heavily implies that Cathy >! caused it to happen by “leading him on” : which basically blames the girl for being raped! Hopefully, by now, we know better about what REALLY causes rape and what doesn’t! !<
And the sequels to “Flowers in the Attic” also have a lot of >! victim blaming for rape. !<. It’s heavily implied in the sequels that >! rape happens because a man “can’t control himself” : as opposed in real life, where rape happens because he made an active bad choice to rape someone! Also implies in the sequels that rape happens because a girl/woman “leads a man on”, or “asks for it”, as opposed to the reality: which is that rape happens in the presence of a rapist! And that it is NOT your fault (as the victim). !<
>! I can forgive her because of the times, but in the present day, we should be aware of it, and not internalize the problematic messages! !<