Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews

If you've been around the blogosphere the past few months, you may have noticed that everyone has been talking about V.C. Andrews and Flowers in the Attic. And you know what? I'm joining the group and talking about it too.

Flowers in the Attic is the story of the Dollanganger family. Cathy is the narrator. She's beautiful and annoying. She has a brother named Christ [Note: His name is Chris. Not Christ. But as Gabbi pointed out in the comments, it's too good of a typo to fix.] who smart and beautiful and also annoying. She also has twin siblings, Carrie and Cory. The twins are beautiful and annoying. Their mother, Corrine, is beautiful and annoying. And their father is beautiful until he turns into a corpse. These are very pretty people, if you didn't catch on. The children are so pretty that their old neighbors call them the Dresden Dolls:

Oh, wait. Wrong Dresden Dolls.

Anyway. Like I said earlier, their father turns into a corpse pretty early on. And because the mother is too lazy to even attempt to find a job, she packs up the Dresden Dolls and takes them to her parents house. But- gasp!- Corrine's parents hate her! Oh noez! Turns out, Corrine's parents are crazy Christian people and disprove of the children for reasons unknown until later. So when they arrive, Grandma takes all the children and sticks them in the attic.

And so the story really begins. The children are stuck in the attic for years, waiting for their mother to convince their dying grandfather that he loves her enough to write her back into his will. Because once she [kind of steals] all his riches, her and the kids are gone.

But she decides to be mean and annoying and take FOREVER with her goal of getting her kids out of the attic. But the grandmother, who puts the kids in the attic in the first place, brings them food and soap and stuff everyday and lets them amuse themselves by decorating the attic with flowers. This is one of the reasons why I don't really hate the grandma, but good golly I hate the mother. Read it and you may guess some other reasons.

I think I've talked enough about the mom since she really isn't a main character. Time to talk about the children.

Ugh, the children.

These children are so annoying. They have good reason (they are stuck in an attic, after all) but goodness. Cathy is either whining or making demands all the time. Chris is always being smart and all "Our mother will get us out! she will! POSITIVE THINKING, CHILDREN! Positive thinking!" Carrie and Cory were demon four year old children. Especially Carrie. Someone needs to teach her some manners. They had nothing better to do. They can't go outside. Can't make noise. You would think they would at least try a little harder to make the twins a little...nicer while they didn't have anything to do.

This review type thing makes it seem like I didn't like this book. But I loved it! It's so bad but it's so good. It's the good trash, like Taren and Steph say.