Troubling and Gripping
3 stars
My mother had Flowers in the Attic and many other V.C. Andrews books on her shelves when I was growing up and got new books every year. Unlike all the speculative fiction books on my father's shelves, I never cracked the covers of these books, though the covers were fascinating to me. I had a good sense of the book's reputation before starting to read it last month. There are so many traumas, abuses, and deeply unsettling elements in this novel, and I'm not sure I could recommend it to someone who wasn't braced for and comfortable with all of that. It's a troubling story with plenty of complications and twists to make it gripping.
My mother had Flowers in the Attic and many other V.C. Andrews books on her shelves when I was growing up and got new books every year. Unlike all the speculative fiction books on my father's shelves, I never cracked the covers of these books, though the covers were fascinating to me. I had a good sense of the book's reputation before starting to read it last month. There are so many traumas, abuses, and deeply unsettling elements in this novel, and I'm not sure I could recommend it to someone who wasn't braced for and comfortable with all of that. It's a troubling story with plenty of complications and twists to make it gripping.
