Girl A
A Book Review of Girl A by Abigail Dean
TW: Child Abuse, Suicide, Self-injurious behaviour
To protect the identity of the six children who escaped the ‘House of Horrors,’ they are given anonymous titles. ‘Girl A,’ Lex was is the oldest girl of the Gracie house and the one to escape and get help for her siblings who were found chained, starved, and beaten in their rooms.
Girl A – the one to escape.
Now an adult and successful New York lawyer, Lex is called back to London to deal with Mother’s death in prison and is named executor of her will, which contains a bit of money and the house where it all happened.
Lex must track down her surviving siblings and have them sign off on turning the house into the one thing their parents would’ve hated – a community center.
There are a lot of polarizing reviews on this novel. It’s a did not finish or a must-read. There seems to be no in between. I loved it. I read it in a day without meaning to.
It was sitting on my kitchen table waiting to get to the top of my TBR, and as I was sitting there waiting for the oven to preheat, I decided to read the first couple of pages, which was the end of me and any responsibilities I may have had.
I think what threw people off is the use of ‘thriller’ – this was not a suspenseful read, the only actual mystery storyline I had figured out pretty quickly.
It is a story of survival and growth. I appreciated that Abigail Dean chose not to deep dive into the details of the abuse the children experienced. She also lets us determine if Mother was evil or an abuse victim herself. She touches on the criminal case that lands Mother in jail until her death but doesn’t spend much time there.
She was clear on where this story was to take place and kept us situated solidly in the future with perfectly placed flashbacks.
I will always recommend this book, but I think it’s important to stress this is not the suspense/thriller you expect. There are no deep twists or unexpected story arcs.
If you go in with these high expectations on what this book isn’t, you may leave disappointed.
SYNOPSIS
Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about her family. She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents--her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings - and with the childhood they shared.
What begins as a propulsive tale of escape and survival becomes a gripping psychological family story about the shifting alliances and betrayals of sibling relationships--about the secrets our siblings keep, from themselves and each other. Who have each of these siblings become? How do their memories defy or galvanize Lex's own? As Lex pins each sibling down to agree to her family's final act, she discovers how potent the spell of their shared family mythology is, and who among them remains in its thrall and who has truly broken free.