flowers in the attic

Between the ages of nine through fourteen, I spent two weeks every summer at a camp in the foothills of the Berkshires. I remember loving the process of choosing the books I would bring to read as there was always down time in the cabin. Sometimes I brought books that I had already read but wanted to share with other cabin mates. It seemed as if there was always one or two girls who also loved to read, so we would inevitably swap books. I loved the surprise of getting to read books that I knew nothing about. The summer I was fourteen I packed a selection of SE Hinton, Robert Cormier, and Paul Zindel -- my three favorite YA authors at the time (having already devoured Judy Blume’s YA). I was usually the girl in the cabin who knew the most about books and was proud of that fact -- I had secretly read just about everything on my older sister's bookshelf including The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby. But that summer, there was a really terrific reader in the cabin who had me beat. Her name was Stephanie and she was reading everything on her MOTHER's bookshelf (including Judy Blume’s Wifey!). The day she arrived at camp she was heavily lost in Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews. I knew nothing about this book and was intrigued by the very adult-looking mass market paperback cover of the pretty girl inside the attic window. By dinner time, Stephanie had stopped reading long enough to tell the seven of us in the cabin what this book was about. There was a horrible grandmother, a selfish mother, two beautiful teenagers and two younger children who were locked away in an attic. The novel was full of good and evil, passion and peril, and we were all absolutely intrigued. The race was on for each one of us to have the chance to read not only Flowers in the Attic but the two other books in the series in the remaining thirteen days we were at camp. Looking back on that summer, I remember the experience being almost like an initiation into a club, probably a lot like how today's teens feel when reading the Twilight and The Hunger Games series. I don't think I made many horseback-riding or sailing lessons that summer because every free moment I had I was diving into VC Andrews' novels. I can still picture the image of my cabin mates at night in our bunks talking about the suspense, the drama, and, of course, the racy parts -- it was sort of my first taste of being in a book club. The other day I decided to reread Flowers in the Attic. Although it was published as an adult novel, by today’s standards it might qualify as New YA. Whatever the case, I find myself again eagerly turning the pages. A guilty pleasure that has stood the test of time.