"Flowers in the Attic" (Dollanganger #1)

Welcome to Booktober! As I mentioned on my Instagram account, I decided that for the month of October I was going to read books that are perfect for All Hallow´s Eve. Each week you will have a new review of a creepy, horrible and dark novel that fits perfectly in the Halloween´s atmosphere. Hope you like it!

Lady Bookworm

SYNOPSIS: 

Such wonderful children. Such a beautiful mother. Such a lovely house. Such endless terror!

It wasn't that she didn't love her children. She did. But there was a fortune at stake—a fortune that would assure their later happiness if she could keep the children a secret from her dying father.

So she and her mother hid her darlings away in an unused attic.

Just for a little while.

But the brutal days swelled into agonizing years. Now Cathy, Chris, and the twins wait in their cramped and helpless world, stirred by adult dreams, adult desires, served a meager sustenance by an angry, superstitious grandmother who knows that the Devil works in dark and devious ways. Sometimes he sends children to do his work—children who—one by one—must be destroyed....

'Way upstairs there are four secrets hidden. Blond, beautiful, innocent struggling to stay alive..”

Credits to Goodreads.com

REVIEW: 

“Love doesn't always come when you want it to. Sometimes it just happens, despite your will.”

I have had this novel on my bookshelf since 2013 and it wasn´t until last week that I decided to pick it up, remove the dust from it and gave it a chance. I have heard a lot of opinions about this book at home. My mum read the saga years ago and she was always pointing out that the novels were harsh, dark and sad. I decided to watch the film adaptation first and I finally understood what my mother meant.

Flowers in the Attic is the first book in the Dollanganger´s saga by V.C. Andrews and it tells the story of the Dollangangers, Cathy, Chris, Corey and Carrie, who lose their father in a fatal car accident and therefore, lose all their belongings as they are not able to face the debts.

 As a result, they move with their mother´s parents and they are promised happiness and well-being. However, when they arrive they discover that they have to live confined in an attic, as their mother did something horrible in the past and has to gain back her father´s love in order to introduce the children to him.  This macabre situation unleashes tragedy, among other things, and a forbidden desire.

I won´t deny that I chose this book on purpose to begin Booktober, as the novel is tragic and gets the reader gooseflesh. For me it is a novel about love and the lack of love. Children discover what love is in that attic, taking care of each other and learning that those who were supposed to protect them, despise them and keep them captive like animals.

Cathy is the one in charge of telling the reader the story. The author puts herself in the twelve-years-old´s  shoes and narrates the four children´s misfortunes during the 3 years when they are kept captive in the attic, left to their fate by the person that presumably loves them.

The novel is perfectly written as the author uses an extensive and poetic vocabulary, which makes the reader feel an unstoppable empathy for the children.

The truth is, it is not a novel for everyone. The Dollanganger´s story is hard and sad. The readers watch the years go by, as they turn the pages, and can see how the four children, known as the Dresden Dolls, due to their fair hair and porcelain doll faces, fade as their dreams and hopes are destroyed.