Scan barcode
A review by hisghoulfriday
Petals on the Wind by V.C. Andrews
2.0
Petals on the Wind made me both pity and hate Cathy at the same time. I won't go into too much detail about all of the terrible things that are happening to Cathy, but there's creepy gross foster dad, creepy gross brother, and a ballet boyfriend who's the human equivalent of hot garbage (actually all three men are). Cathy's also incredibly narcissistic in this book. She goes on and on about how beautiful she is, and she even talks about how ugly her ballet teachers are because...they're too muscly (girl, WHAT?!)
The pacing is all over the place, at the beginning we get a glimpse into a possible revenge plot with Cathy and her mom when Cathy starts sending cryptic postcards. But then it completely stops and we get a love triangle (square? Diamond?) between Cathy, creepy gross foster dad, creepy gross brother, and creepy gross ballet boyfriend, and it gets dragged out for ages. And then, like all bad soap operas, we get a tragedy and the book finally moves on to the final act, which is a weird revenge plot where Cathy seduces her step-dad to get back at her mom (yeah, I don't understand it either).
The writing, much like how it was in Flowers in the Attic, is overdramatic, and given the content matter in the story, it can feel really exploitative at times.
I did like the fact that Cathy seemed to have gotten over her use of the word 'golly' so it was nice to see some character development I guess. But overall, I'd recommend skipping this one as most of the plot is just unnecessary filler.
The pacing is all over the place, at the beginning we get a glimpse into a possible revenge plot with Cathy and her mom when Cathy starts sending cryptic postcards. But then it completely stops and we get a love triangle (square? Diamond?) between Cathy, creepy gross foster dad, creepy gross brother, and creepy gross ballet boyfriend, and it gets dragged out for ages. And then, like all bad soap operas, we get a tragedy and the book finally moves on to the final act, which is a weird revenge plot where Cathy seduces her step-dad to get back at her mom (yeah, I don't understand it either).
The writing, much like how it was in Flowers in the Attic, is overdramatic, and given the content matter in the story, it can feel really exploitative at times.
I did like the fact that Cathy seemed to have gotten over her use of the word 'golly' so it was nice to see some character development I guess. But overall, I'd recommend skipping this one as most of the plot is just unnecessary filler.