Flowers in the Attic - V.C. Andrews

In all honesty, I read this book because I was morbidly curious. Some friends of mine started telling me about this story and how it was kind of forbidden but very good, and I had been looking for a story like this… but I wanted a good one, and specially, one with a good ending! I love good endings, even if they’re forbidden! haha

So I started it about 3 or 4 days ago, and I couldn’t put it down! It is written in frist person by one of the characters and everything is from her point of view.

It starts with a seemingly perfect, beautiful family that is suddenly struck with the death of the father.

The mother, being all prettily useless, decides that since she’s never learned how to work they’ll best go beg on her parents mercy and wealth. From there we know something’s not right becuase the kids never knew their mother actually had a family (even though the oldest is 15 y/o), either way they go and things go from bad to worse from there.

They arrive in secrecy to a very big and wealthy house, are not welcomed by their grandmother and are quickly shut in a room far away in the attic, where the service people can’t hear them, all the time listening to criptic talks from grandma about their mother’s sins… (gasp! oh ohhh)

It is not long before we find out that the children’s mother was/is hated by her parents because she betrayed them by marying and (though her father doesn’t know) having children with her uncle (OMGGGG!!) (her father’s half-brother). BIG SHOCK… but we kind of asumed it from grandma’s comments...

So grandma, big religious woman as she is, bannes the children from sleeping together boys and girls, go to the bathroom at the same time boys and girls, looking at each other… etc etc etc… Also never misses the chance to tell them how much she doesn’t like them and she thinks they’re the children of the devil.

The kids of course don’t understand why they’re so hated so much, even though they kind of know why, but they don’t want to accept it… and accept their enslavement becuase mom told them that when her father dies, she will make sure he’ll once again include her in her testament and that way become very rich!

With this promise, weeks and months pass by, and though the children still see their mother often they start thinking how she’s not making lots of progress in the matter of taking them out… and by this point, the older brother and sister (Chris 15 and Cathy 12) began being nicer to each other in order to keep their younger brother and sister (5 y/o) at ease and quiet in the big attic.

Mom starts to skip visits to the children, but grandma never misses going to drop food into their doorstep. Years pass, and mom goes less and less, and the older children start growing and their bodies also grow and change… Chris who is very smart and likes to read a lot, sort of understands what’s happening in theory but still feels distraught that many changes happen to him that he has no one to talk to.

One particular day, Grandma caughts Cathy checking out her new courvy body and Chris looking at her… saying that this is exactly what she was expecting to happen and beats the crap out of them… and this brings the two older sibilings even more close.

Around three years pass, and children are weaker and don’t trust their own mother anymore.. and for this decide to plan to run and start stealing money from the house. The twins are sick and Cathy and Chris are desperate to help them out, but not knowing what to do they just keep taking care of them the best way they can.

By this poing, Cathy and Chris relationship is so close that they don’t mind being close together naked and touching but never doing more than that… until one thay Cathy goes to steal money from her mother’s room and stumbles upon the sleeping form of her mother’s new husband and decides to brush a kiss to him… He thinks he was dreaming, but later when Chris finds out about this he gets in a jealousy fit that makes him go to Cathy and claims her his own and that only he can have her, by making her his (of course by having sex)… which afterwards makes Chris feel very very guilty but Cathy confesses to him that she also kind of wanted him to do it, so it was not a rape… (very causual….)

*note: I have to say, after lots of very intimate steamy situations, the sex part was reaaally very fast… haha I know it wasn’t supposed to be good for either of them but… come on! haha

So, well now they have a new kind of connection that becomes shatered by the suden worsening of Cory (younger brother) and feeling they’ve angered god because of their sinful act they decide never to do it again (mmmmmhhff… drat!). Sadly, short after Cory gets seriously sick, he dies! and no later Chris finds out the ugly truth… That the Mean Grandpa was already dead, that their mother had lied to them about it AND that their sickness was because Mom or Grandma were puting arsenic into their food…

Of course, this is the drop that mmm spilled the glass (?) and they run with their most valuable things, money, Carrie (younger sister) and some clothes to a new life in Florida.

But that, is another story… haha the book says...

Opinion: I didn’t expected the book to be as good as it was… I coulndn’t stop reading!! I love how this is a story were you can see how much can you make something happen by forbidding it!!

I loved how much I could feel the rejection both sibilings had to the idea of giving in, but also how they never had a choice… they became very close in a very comfortable place at the worst time of their lives.

I say comfortable place, not because it was a good place to be in, but because they had all they needed (as they themselves stated it) food, toys, expensive clothing, books, they were relatively well treated (except for one or two times) so, what else could they do when their bodies were changing and they had LOTS and LOTS of idle time… It could’ve been worse IMO.

Now, I’m feeling compelled to continue reading the other books… just because I want to find out what happens next…