Category: book Nook
It looks as though Virginia C. Andrews was a pretty popular author since many of her books were bestsellers. I wanted to know how many of you guys have read books by her and what do you think of her characters, especially the main character. She wrote series such as: Gemini series, Orphans, Shooting Stars, and Flowers in the Attic and its sequels.
I discovered her novels when I searched psychological fiction on NLS. The books I found looked quite intriguing, so I looked her up and there's a treasure chest of her astonishingly dramatic novels. I love the way her books unfold -- the way one day everything is going fine, and the next day, the shit hits the fan and all hell breaks loose. Her books are like roller coaster rides; there are so many jolts and twists. What I don't like very much are her main characters. I've only read about nine or ten out of around sixty books she wrote, but her main characters seem to be the same person in a different book. Almost all of them are adolescent or teenage girls who are submissive and have no backbone whatsoever. They're helpless, defenseless, and naive, and it annoys me greatly that almost all her main characters are portrayed this way. Maybe it's a reflection of how she felt in her youth, but somtimes it really gets to me at certain points in her books.
What do you guys think?
I agree with you about her main characters. I stopped reading her stuff after perhaps nine or ten books also partly because of her spineless characters and also because of the themes of incest and child abuse that seemed to run through all of them. If it's true that we write what we know, then V.C. Andrews must have had a hellish childhood.
Agreed. I think I read about eight books of hers, I didn't count. I stopped because of the incest and child abuse that was in all of them. First, it was just too disturbing to me. Second, once you've read one series, even one book of hers, you've pretty much read them all. How she got to be so popular is beyond me.
I read one or 2 and a half and then gave it up as a bad job. I don't like the incest that's for sure.
I am still a fan of her novels. I am fascinated by the way events unfold and the gamut of living situations and backgrounds these girls come from. I will still read her work, but never ten books in a row again, that's for sure.
Even though this woman is dead, she's still drawing in the cash, or rather her ghostwriter, Andrew Neiderman, is. Apparently, there's books lined up for release in 2012 and 2013.
the only books of hers that I've read from her is the orphans series... I've heard the shooting star series is good, might start reading some of those...
I heard some place that the Flowers in the Attic and its sequels are the only ones that are really written by her. The others are by other people.