HarperCollins
2012 Edition
ISBN 978-0007873777
FINALLY...we’ve made it to the end of the Flowers in the Attic series!
Seeds of Yesterday picks up somewhere in the 1990s as the Dollanganger family descends upon the newly re-structured Foxworth Hall for Bart's birthday. Bart has recently graduated from law school and has been named primary heir to the Foxworth trust since Corrine’s death. Christopher, his stepfather-uncle acts as executor, further spurring conflict within the family. Jory and his wife Melody are famed ballet dancers with twins on the way. Cindy is a burgeoning young woman engulfed in the usual teenage drama, and Cathy and Christopher are still together despite the revelation of their union detailed in If There Be Thorns. Also, Cathy and Christopher's presumed dead uncle Joel has returned to serve as Bart's butler. The family becomes further marred as they learn that Bart will not receive the Foxworth fortune in full. As usual, Bart continues on a novel length tirade against his family. Jory is injured at the birthday party and is now a paraplegic. Melody physically and emotionally abandons him and the children she ultimately births. Cindy is a sexually active, and Cathy is continually disturbed by her uncle Joel’s presence. As you may already know, this is par for the course in this family drama.
Seeds of Yesterday is probably the least enjoyable/likeable of the four books in the series. Cathy returns as narrator, but her point of view isn’t particularly strong as she’s evolved as an adult. Her voice hasn't changed since book two, Petals on the Wind. Not to mention the cringe-worthy description of her children’s anatomy (at one point she describes Cindy’s and Jory’s body parts as if she were longing for them in a romance novel). The story also doesn’t go anywhere significant. There is definitely movement, but shifting from a birthday party, to an argument, to plans for another party, to walking in on Cindy having sex with her boyfriend doesn’t present anything compelling enough to drive a story. It was more like reading a text-heavy scrapbook of ongoings without a real point and or plotting. The novel also continued in redundancy with casting Joel, who is essentially John Amos, the butler from the previous book. The dialogue was stilted by overdrawn wording that lacked realism, oftentimes providing lines that should have been in exposition rather than conversation. None of the characters were particularly interesting and had no eye-catching storylines. With a series based entirely on the outrageous and unbelievable, it ran out of steam with this last installment.
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