Petals on the Wind

All right, I'll confess.

I watched Petals on the Wind last night.

I'm not proud of it. In fact, I'm very embarrassed that I succumbed. I didn't watch Flowers in the Attic and I didn't even know that they were capitalizing on the high ratings by putting the other books into production until two days ago when I saw Petals on the TV guide. Then, I snorted in disbelief, rolled my eyes, and forgot about it.

Until at 9pm last night, I was flipping through channels looking for something mindless to watch.

The Dollanganger books were the thing to read when I was in junior high. The Twilight books of our generation. Instead of sparkly vampires and pining werewolves, they had gothic horror and incest. I devoured them, I must admit. I related to Cathy in a lot of ways. Living in fear of your domineering grandmother while having no choice but to reside in her house? Check. Absentee mother you craved time/affection from? Check. Being responsible for younger siblings? Check.

And Petals was my favorite, probably because it was the soapiest of them all. Confession: I grew up on soaps and still watch General Hospital every day. The medium entertains me. The soapy aspects only bother me when I try and explain it to people who don't watch soaps because I know 100% how silly and extreme they are.

Worst part was, it wasn't even that good. Too much happens in the book to make it easy to condense, which means huge jumps in the plot and slippery characterizations.

Am I the only one who got suckered?