Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Incest, rape romance and smut. That’s how my summers were spent 86-90 as a young teen. Anyone else read VC Andrews? My mom bought me the books. What the hell was she thinking? I guess it did get me to read 😂

Ummm Flowers in the Attic was assigned reading in 8th grade for us.

You sure that wasn't Flowers For Algernon?

I read them all and loved them. My parents had no clue what I was reading. They used the library as a babysitter and I spent every day after school reading tons and tons of books. Some of the books I read actually scarred me and I would not want my own children to read them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Incest, rape romance and smut. That’s how my summers were spent 86-90 as a young teen. Anyone else read VC Andrews? My mom bought me the books. What the hell was she thinking? I guess it did get me to read 😂

Ummm Flowers in the Attic was assigned reading in 8th grade for us.

Whaaaat? Where?

I read all of the first four VC Andrews series. FITA starting in about 5th grade, Heaven, the New Orleans ones (Ruby?) and the Cutler ones. They were formulaic after the first ones but so juicy. I also read all the Jackie Collins books.

Anonymous wrote:Incest, rape romance and smut. That’s how my summers were spent 86-90 as a young teen. Anyone else read VC Andrews? My mom bought me the books. What the hell was she thinking? I guess it did get me to read 😂

Ummm Flowers in the Attic was assigned reading in 8th grade for us.

*cannot ruin

I grew up reading V.C. Andrew’s books starting in the eighties.

I am still a huge fan of hers (or her ghostwriter’s!) and still try to read each new release as it comes out.

The characters in her books are usually young (teenagers) and am not sure if these books are in the “YA” category - but as an adult reader, I find them riveting.

I let my daughter read her books growing up.
Sure there is incest (at least in her earlier works) as well as rape too.

But I am of the school of thought that what one reads at a young age can ruin a child.
My daughter knew she was reading FICTION.
And that what the characters were doing was immoral.
Just as I did when I first read “Flowers in the Attic.”

It’s not like incest became common after that book came out!

I read “Wifey” by Judy Blume but it didn’t make me want to go out + have sex.
By the time a person is old enough to read adult books > they usually are old enough to differentiate right from wrong.

My mom actually recommended VC Andrews books to me when I was around 14! And then she gave me her Stephen King books as well. I was going through the little Christopher Pike and RL Stines books too fast so she told me to read books that would take me longer to finish so she didn’t have to drive me to the library as often.
I was also allowed to watch the Nightmare on Elmstreet and Friday the 13th movies as a kid. The 80’s were a great time to be a kid!

Anonymous wrote:Incest, rape romance and smut. That’s how my summers were spent 86-90 as a young teen. Anyone else read VC Andrews? My mom bought me the books. What the hell was she thinking? I guess it did get me to read 😂

My parents never once monitored or questioned what I read. I don't remember how I obtained VC Andrews, but I read and obsessed about it all. What a plot.

Anonymous wrote:Incest, rape romance and smut. That’s how my summers were spent 86-90 as a young teen. Anyone else read VC Andrews? My mom bought me the books. What the hell was she thinking? I guess it did get me to read 😂

I read all of them. I'm pretty sure my parents never had a single clue who VC Andrews is. My nose was always buried in a book and that was good enough for them.

This isn't directed at you so much, OP, but I don't understand why people don't see that WHAT kids read is so much less important than the fact that they JUST READ. All of this pearl-clutching over the horrors of story material -- which is stuff they already know about anyway! -- totally misses the point. You think the U.S. is so far behind other wealthy countries in academics just because of math or STEM? The reading comes first. Literacy is the foundational building block. Without it, you cannot do the rest.

If your kid is reading and it's not, you know, Penthouse Penpals or something truly horrifically violent (and I mean worse than what they encounter in real life--maybe whatever's the literary equivalent of "Taxi Driver"), just let them read. They'll move on to other stuff. Just like you and I did after reading "Tiger Eyes" and Sweet Valley High and, yes, VC Andrews.
/rant

I read these all in 7th grade I think. I read everything. My parents didn't care.

Yes. And RL Stein and Christopher Pike.

I read every single one of these. My parents didn’t monitor anything I did let alone reading.

Yep, Flowers in the Attic (and the rest of them), Clan of the Cave Bear (all of them), Wifey and more

My parents didn't monitor what I read. I remember when my 5th grader wanted to read the Hunger Games and I didn't want him to. I spoke with the reading specialist at his ES, and her take was that if he didn't understand some of the things in there it would go over his head and if he did, oh well...

Anonymous wrote:I read Flowers in the Attic and the next book in that series, but my parents had no idea.

-Neglected Gen Xer

Same - another neglected Gen Xer

Anonymous wrote:Yes. I read such smut as a tween/teen. My mom was strict and didn’t let us watch PG-13 movies until we were 13 or R until around 15 or 16, but we could read any book we wanted.

And Scruples was my favorite!!!!