When VC Andrews’s debut novel, Flowers in the Attic, was published in 1979, it was not well received by all critics: one described it as “possibly the worst book I have ever read”.
However, her gothic horror-romance about four children who are locked in an attic for three years by their beautiful, conniving mother – who seems loving but actually starves and poisons them – went on to sell more than 40 million copies, was on the New York Times bestseller list for 14 weeks and is still in print more than 40 years later.
