Customer Reviews

Broken Flower (Early Spring)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I read alot of VCA books when I was a young adult. I loved the Flowers in the Attic series. This one I couldn't finish. It never got to the point. It dragged on and on and on about the puberty issue. Geez....then when the brother touched the sister, I had enough. Sorry I can't agree with the fantastic reviews of some of the other viewers, but this book just didn't cut the mustard!!!

I've been a fan of V.C. Andrews' through everything-including her death! However, this book finally pushed me to the limit. As a fan of V.C. I'm clearly a fan of the grotesque and macabre, but this exploration of a seven-year-old's sexuality went too far. My stomach was churning the whole time. Yes, I understand that this is a real phenomenon-early puberty-but something as disturbing as someone who not too long ago was wearing diapers menstruating is a medical issue, not one that should be put in gothic hack fiction as "sexy". Psychologically a child of seven could never handle such an event and I found the addition of a character who wanted to "introduce" the child to her "new feelings" so upsetting I decided to give up the ghost, literally (the ghostwriter) for good. He went over the edge, and not in a good way. I felt molested reading this book, and I have a baby girl, and I certainly wouldn't ever want her to read it. I recycled it.

I have loved VC Andrews for years. The first few books after her death we still great - they found the perfect ghostwriter. Now, something has certainly changed because the book was awful. I kept waiting for it to get "to the point" and it never did. It might be the end of the line!

I have been reading V.C Andrews for over 20 years. In fact, my first "adult" book I picked out when I was 11 years old was V.C Andrews' book Heaven, the first in the Casteel series. So, needless to say, my expectations were high, and my hopes were even higher.

Jordan March is your typical 6 year old girl, except she lives in a very large and beautiful mansion that is lorded over by her grandmother. Her mother, father, and brother, Ian, also live there along with her. Suddenly, Jordan's life turns upside down when at that young age she gets her first menstrual cycle. Her mother, in fear that her grandmother will think she is a freak, hides it from her while her father buries his head in a hole pretending it didn't happen. Her grandmother, however, soon finds out and takes over her medical treatment to help stunt the hormonal imbalance.

Shortly into the book, Jordan's mother finds out that her father has been having an affair with a woman and she calls for a divorce. Her grandmother, not having that in the slightest, goes to talk with her mother and she agrees after several veiled threats to end the divorce proceedings. During that time where her parents were supposedly patching things up, they are in a terrible car accident on their way home, finding out Jordan's brother, Ian, was molesting her.

No it doesn't get any happier.

After her parents are both taken to the hospital, her father paralyzed, her mother in a coma brain damaged, Jordan and Ian are sent back to the mansion with a nanny, who is a terrible and nasty woman further damaging poor Jordan in nightmarish ways that are reminiscent to old nun horror stories.

It still doesn't get any happier.

Ian, who I figured out to be a total sociopath, throws a hissy fit and poisons the nanny with strychnine while she sleeps therefore getting sent away to a home for the juvenile criminally insane.

That's about all I can say story wise without giving away where this book in the series ends. However, I'd like to add a few things before you think about reading this book; this book deals with child sexuality both with Jordan going through puberty and being molested by two different people, like with all of the V.C Andrews books there is no happy ending and probably never will be, and it's written by a ghost writer since the woman died, well, years ago.

I have read some critics getting in a tizzy over the child sexuality thing but a point to make here again is that all of her books have dealt with this before in some way or another. Maybe not so blatantly or so young, but it's been there. So, if you are a little faint of heart about this subject matter I don't recommend this author at all. Flowers in the Attic was a good example of this. Heads up, in the end of that particular series, Cathy marries her brother Chris and has children with him so I don't exactly see what the fuss is about here. If you can stomach that, you can stomach this.

At 16-years-old I ventured into a bookstore and stumbled on Flowers in the Attic.

Hooked.

Read them all.

And I do mean ALL.

Acquired many old and all the new novels from Amazon in hardcover. Extremely fond of first editions.

Currently, really liked the April Shadows series. Ghostman A.N. was on his game. Wished it had been a four volume series.

However, the Broken Flowers set appears to have been written for a much younger crowd--perhaps, dare I say it--maybe grade schoolers?

Hope this isn't the future of the VCA books.

A.N. can write fine novels i.e. the Ruby series; the aforementioned April series and I also enjoyed the DeBeers set. Too bad he is so inconsistent. There is a possibility his publisher is attempting to send him down a different path.

As a first generation VCA fan I find the formula to have grown old. The pieces are still there, and I do enjoy that, but it's become too familiar. That's why I enjoyed the April series so much. It dared to take the formula into uncharted waters. What fun!

The scale is difficult to balance, but here is what I'd do.

Keep the girl. Keep the hardship. Keep the broken family. Keep the teenager in the first book. Add a stronger male character. Have the main female have a daughter who despises her mother and father and leaves the nest swearing to acquire enough money and power to break their business empire.


In other words, dare to be different.

I have to state from the start the only book I ever liked by V.C. Andrews was "Flowers in the Attic." The dialogue was simplistic but at least the story was interesting. I read the next in the series and it was terrible. I read the third in the series and gave up midway.

Someone gave me Broken Flower and having nothing else to read I am attempting to read it but I won't last long. To a degree the characters are the same as in Flowers. Last night I read Ian who molested his sister is going to be a doctor. How many times can this story be rehashed?

The mother's grief over precocious puberty is so over the wall it is pathological, especially in this day and time when it is common. I had a child with precocious puberty and that was 15 years ago.

Usually I am happy that people read no matter what they read but I hate these characters. I hate these storylines. I feel badly that people don't read books of better quality.

The ghost writter seriously sucks at continuty. The book stands alone but when taken as part of a series, which it is, it sucks. In this book the girl is seven and had her period, in the next book she was older when her period started. I hate it when there is no continuty!

I stopped at the first chapter! When I read something along the lines of don't let Grandma see your pubes I couldn't continue.

I'm a HUGE VC Andrews Fan and I have read a lot of her books. Everyone one of her books I've read has gotten me hooked. This one made my skin crawl.

This has to stop, seriously. When Neiderman first ghostwrote for VCA, he did a decent job. I liked the Cutler series, and he did a good job of finishing up the books that VCA had started but didn't finish for the Dollanganger and Casteel series. The Landry and Logan series, while not the best, were still very decent, and I enjoyed them. However, it all started to go downhill with Orphans. That was not what VCA would have written. I endured the Hudson and DeBeers series with disgust. The April Shadows and Broken Flower series are making VCA spin in her grave right now.

My problem is not the precocious puberty or what her brother is doing - this kind of stuff happens in real life, and worse happens in Flowers in the Attic, but the ghostwriter has handled this matter in a very sloppy and poorly-written and thought-out manner. Mr. Neriderman, please stop writing for VCA and go back to your own work. You're a old man, stop writing as if you were a young girl. Put the VCA name to rest, did you know there's a online petition circulating around demanding that you stop writing for VCA???

I am and have been a fan of VC Andrews since high school. I have bought every single one of her books and will more than likely continue to do so. But this book was poorly put together and the characters' reaction to Jordan's early development was simply overdone. Perhaps if I knew nothing about early puberty, I would simply accept it, but since I do...let's just say I did not care the book and I agree with a previous reviewer that these books have gone downhill. Early puberty is startling and frightening for little ones, but I could easily name ten girls in my grade school that began developing at early ages and no one treated them like some horrific mutant. The writer made it seem like she magically grew a tail or a third arm that had to be hidden from the world.
The premise was lacking and the writing poor and yet...I keep reading.