A review by mistyknights
Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

 don't remember how old I was when I first read this, but it was too young to properly process the religious horror, physical/sexual/psychological abuse, misogyny, and whole lot of other trauma themes littered throughout the text. Add a poltergeist and a small town in Maine and this would be a Stephen King book. Not saying it was a mistake for me to read it as a pre-teen but I still would not jump up and offer it as an option to pre-teen as an adult woman.

That said, everything that made this a classic is still there. It's better written than I expected it to be, though it does meander in the middle and could have been 100 pages shorter
. Also, the incest is at times romanticized by the main character ( it's first person and intentionally mirrors her parent's experience) and shown as twisted because it is always manifested within violence and mental abuse.
But trigger warnings for that and for a brief moment of spontaneous racism just in case you forget this book was published in 1979.
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