Barf. Thought Flowers in the Attic might be a good “laying-out” book when I was 15. Nope. That book was so stupid and implausible that I tossed it across my back yard in frustration.
I read the Flowers in the Attic series when I was 11 or 12, and it was handed to me by my mother. For a while after that, my Mom would pass down the next book in the series after she had read it (she was not screening them for me or anything, she read them then gave them to me and my sisters). It was scandalous, but even then it was so far-fetched and dramatic as to be silly. Mom never worried it would warp our young minds or anything (but she probably would not have let me read Scruples around that same age if she had read it first).
Ha! This was my favorite Andrews book when I was in junior high.
Hell, I might do this. My reading list is getting too heavy, so maybe some trashy pre-teen fiction will lighten things up a bit. Although, much like Hrududu, I’d probably be a bit embarrassed to read it in public. Oh, who are we kidding? I have no shame.
I loved those books in middle school! I’d didn’t get grossed out by the brother/sister sex probably because I had only sisters, no brothers, and I can’t imagine how that relationship works. It just seemed scandalous and romantic and fascinating.
I had (and have) a little brother who I’d never want to have sex with and I still thought it was romantic. Hey, teens are messed in the heads. No, make that PEOPLE are messed.
But I also read a novel that included a kid gang bang and didn’t think that was all that unusual around the same time. (Age fourteen, I believe.)
Trying to remember how I would have answered that question at age 11, when I read it – part of it was the over-the-top scandalousness that was so appealing, and the other part was that the fictional brother in the book was hawt, and all the real-life brothers we knew were gross and stupid, so it didn’t seem like the same thing at all.
And the fact that he forced her but she wanted it. (Hey, maybe it’s not safe/sane/consensual, but it’s the kind of thing you see in bodice rippers so I know I’m not alone in finding it hot.)
My Sweet Audrina got passed around from kid to kid so much in the 6th grade that it practically fell apart. This thread is totally bringing back memories–I lived on VC Andrews and Dean Koontz in middle school, and wouldn’t touch either now.
Speaking of formulas, I popped in V.C. Andrews into Amazon, clicked on the first book on the page, then read the first review.
Ha ha! So I guess that answers our question about whether the formula is the same.
Yep, that’s it. If she’d been locked up with my brother, she’d have found a way out sooner, with virginity intact.
I think some of the ghostwritten ones took some paragraphs from Flowers nearly word for word.
I remember reading the exact same passages in several of the different series when I was a kid.
In particular female teens. I read it while bored one summer and visiting some relatives who had an extremely limited selection of literature to choose from. But V. C. Andrews wasn’t passed around by teen boys that I can recall. But I know a small army of women that read it as some sort of Rite of Passage when they were teenagers.
I can see Twilight, sorta. But it’s interesting to me that for all the talk of the degeneracy of our current generation of youth, the earlier one grew up on something that was miles less wholesome :).
I think I’m the only person in the universe that thinks that the movie was way better than the book. I’m probably also the only adult male to have read it. Hey, I saw the movie, I wanted to read the book.
Yes, I know what real pain is.
I don’t think it was to quench the brother’s thirst, it was to give him nutrition. The brother was dying of arsenic poisoning. (At least in the movie. I don’t remember the book as well.)
My best friend in junior high was obsessed with those books. I mean, she had a display case of pristine copies, along with her constantly re-read ones (she didn’t have a brother). She made me read them and I think I was scarred for life. 
My Sweet Audrina was actually the first one I read. I kind of want to read one again, to see how bad it is–the whole “rainbow skies and dark clouds of tears” thing might make me gag–but I won’t buy one and I can’t check one out at the library. (I work there, I can’t face anyone at the check-out desk with these books, and anyway they only have a couple of the Dawn series.)
Yeah, I don’t like Twilight for many reasons, but then I have to look back and remember that when we were 13 we were all reading this, which makes Twilight look like Jane Eyre or something.
This is a reason that all libraries should have a self-checkout. Now that I can scan the books myself without having to face an actual person I can check out all kinds of trash without embarrassment. Makes trips to the library much more interesting. 
Oh, I LOVE self check out. Off topic but I hate the long lines at the library. Love being able to get in and out.
Teehee, the plot summaries on wikipedia for the Dollenganger series are wonderful. I love how the whole damn saga ends with Corrine going up into the attic (in the insane son’s Foxworth-hall-replica house, natch) and dying, but not before putting flowers up by the window . . . get it?? Cause that’s how it started!
They kind of remind me of old Indian movies, except maybe (maybe) the incest.
You impress me more all the time. 
Yes, pretty much. Over the top drama - what’s not to like?
I also wasn’t bothered by the incest. I’m an only child, and it seemed to make sense to me. I’d go batshit insane locked up like that.
Plus the incest is really brief, at the end of the book, and not at all the focus of the book. Unlike later books. I read the whole series.