Petals on the Wind: Dollanganger, Book 2

I really recommend this Virginia Andrews series, it’s great if you like psychological reads. This series follows a particular family throughout, following trauma.

Catherine is a woman emotionally and physically abused by every man she meets. The continued story of a woman who survived terrible abuse but now struggles to escape the cycle despite having her freedom. From child to grown woman finding her way. A challenging and emotive read.

A mix of emotions from this book! So many things happen to these poor kids.While a good follow up from the first. I enjoyed the first book more.

Just before I start the review of this book, I really have to state my disappointment in the Kindle version. If we have to pay £3.99 (or any sum of money) for a book we can buy for the same price or cheaper in its paperback format, we should be able to expect the highest quality of editing. Unfortunately, the editing of this Kindle version is appalling. It is peppered with mistakes and some sentences make absolutely no sense. I am extremely familiar with this book, having read it dozens of times, but feel for the person who is venturing upon it for the first time.Having said all that, it is now time to review the actual book.This is the third book in a series of five about the Dollanganger children (Garden of Shadows, Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns and Seeds of Yesterday) and is just as haunting and melancholy as the first two.Petals on the Wind chronicles the lives of Chris, Cathy and Carrie after their escape from Foxworth Hall. It is fraught with despair, revenge and tragedy but there is also a yearning for love, hope and trust. The story is told through Cathy's eyes but also manages to speak for Chris and Carrie and tells their story well.I have read this series of books many times and keep returning to them. Although there is much controversy surrounding the claim that Flowers in the Attic was based on a true story, these books will haunt you long after you have finished them, true or not.

Slightly tedious. Cathy is out for revenge big time and who could blame her after being shut away in the attic for so long as a result of pure greed. It was spoiled by the very bad editing and spelling mistakes. I was glad to see she did get retribution in the end.

If you read flowers in the attic then this is a must to read ..

This is the second book of the "Flowers in the attic" quartet. The 'doll' family have escaped from the attic and are trying to make new lives for themselves. Chris is working towards being a doctor, and Cathie towards being a prima ballerina. Unfortunately, Cathie (particularly) is full of seething resentment and is intent upon revenge and this affects important desicions in her life and also has repercussions on the lives of those around her.While the sequel is not as gripping as the first book in the series, it still has the power to move and shock the reader.

Harder to accept the sexist behaviour and thought patterns of the 70s in 2024 but still a great trashy read

Great follow up novel to Flowers in the attic. Would recommend reading after!

Great sequel, enjoed reading it, I read flowers in the attic many years ago I only just found there were more in the series

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This book focuses more on Catherine's husbands and lovers, and on her revenge against her mother. Both make for great, entertaining reading.Love story #1: Cathy's forbidden love for Chris. I think it was fitting Chris's full name means Christ-bearer because he really is Christlike when it comes to forgiveness. He doesn't even hate his mother for being responsible for the death of his only brother, neither for Carrie's stunted growth, which, I believe, in part, leads to her dying so young, and his own loss of trust in the woman who gave him life, not to mention the three years, four months and sixteen days of his childhood lost, lost to him forever.It did take Cathy a long time to finally execute her revenge, but I think she wanted to prove to her mother that she could make something of herself first, which she did, by becoming a prima ballerina, who, sadly, would have been a superstar if only Julian (her first husband and dance partner) hadn't been such a jerk.I think Cathy's love affair with Paul Sheffield, the doctor who took her and her siblings in, was genuine, and though I believe she really did love him, part of that love was gratitude. I also think his age played a role (Paul was twenty four years and some months older than she, just like her father was, for when she was twelve, Chris Sr. was thirty-six). Paul represented stability, the kind of life she knew with her father, and that was partly why he was so attractive to her. Like Chris, Paul was always there for her because her love life went in this order: Chris, Paul, Julian, Paul, Bart, Paul, Chris. I liked all of Cathy's beaus but Julian, who was in love with Cathy, but she just didn't feel that way about him. I think she only thought she loved him at the end. I know some readers thought Cathy promiscuous, but I didn't get that at all. Chris was a mistake, and it wasn't her who initiated it, Paul and Julian she married, and Bart was part of her revenge plan, but all along, I don't think she realized it until the end that it was Bart who was her true love, ever since she was fifteen when she first kissed him and he thought she was part of a dream. I also don't think Bart realized Cathy was his true love either until the end (though I do believe he did love his wife, Corinne, Cathy's mother), when she revealed to him who she was, the dream that had stayed with him all those many years.CAUTION: SPOILER'S AHEAD!!!What's heartbreaking is that just as they realized this, Bart dies, leaving Cathy to go back to Paul carrying Bart's child. Cathy's one true love was the one man she didn't marry.I think Cathy slept with Paul at first only to get Christopher out of her system ("Good-bye, my Christopher Doll", I think she said, as soon as Paul had, um, done the deed), and though her feelings towards her brother that were less than sisterly remained dormant through all her romances, I think she finally accepted at the end that Chris was the one constant in her life. All the rest of the men in it had died on her. I think she was just tired of fighting him, deciding to make a life together with him and her two sons.I advise against reading, or at least accepting the three latter books of this series. Ms. Andrews totally veered off the path by using Bart and Jory's (Cathy's sons) first person voices, especially when they are still children. I have never been a fan of switching points-of-view. I was used to seeing everything through Cathy's eyes and this totally jarred me. It wouldn't have been so bad if the story had went in a different direction, but, well, I won't spoil it for you. "Petals" ended nicely (Foxworth Hall burns down and Corinne is in a convalescent home for the insane), and could have been left alone (which would have been better than having "Thorns" published), letting Cathy and Chris to just live happily ever after, maybe even going back to Gladstone, Pennsylvania, to visit, and raising two nice, normal sons, with Corinne perhaps redeeming herself at the end by saving one of the boys or something and Cathy finally being able to forgive her. As far as I'm concerned, that's what happened. "Thorns" and "Seeds" is V.C.'s version of what happened to Chris and Cathy after they go to Calfornia (I would have liked it better if they had stayed on the East Coast), but I have my own, where they decide to go to Sarasota after all. Though V.C. created the Dresden dolls, I made them mine.This book covers a lot more time than the first, which I think metaphorically illustrates how fast life flew by when they had their freedom and were no longer locked in the attic.Read this wonderful novel.Note to Amazon: The name's Dollanganger, not Dollanger.

The book is great! The font is bolder and bigger than books I’ve read. I had gotten used to the flowers in the attic font so transitioning to this felt strange but I got used to it quickly. My only problem is that the chapter is continued on the same page that the last chapter ended rather than putting the new chapter on a new page. Other than that, the quality was good and the book itself is great!