"Explicit sex is not the appeal of Flowers in the Attic," noted Roger Sutton in a School Library Journal review. "It is the mystery, secrecy, and frustrated passion surrounding sex, particularly the emerging sexuality of the adolescent." This formula found a particular resonance with young female readers as well as adults. "Andrews launched a new kind of Gothic fiction," wrote E. D. Huntley in his V. C. Andrews: A Critical Companion, "a subgenre which shares with horror fiction the unbearable tension of fear even while avoiding the gory elements and occult intrusions." In her lifetime, the reclusive Andrews wrote eight novels that fit such a description. With her death in 1986, the Andrews estate continued her legacy, transforming V.C. Andrews into an industry through books penned by ghost writer Andrew Neiderman. This doppelganger Neiderman/Andrews has turned out over forty novels in eight different series, each following the by-now famous Andrews pattern: a poor but honest and winning heroine is suddenly thrown into the midst of a much richer family she never knew she had and then undergoes various challenges, be it a miserable mother figure or wicked siblings. Boarding school is often thrown into the mix and a love interest balances a pack of trouble: pregnancy or wild high spirits.
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