Girl A by Abigail Dean

326 pages

Publisher: HarperCollins

Book Club Read

 

Blurb

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.

 

Review

 

Yet another book where I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

This is what it says on the back of the paperback:

‘Girl A’, she said. ‘The girl who escaped. If anyone was going to make it, it was going to be you.’

I am Lex Gracie: but they call me Girl A.

I grew up with my family on the moors.

I escaped when I was fifteen years old.

NOW SOMETHING IS PULLING ME BACK…

 

And that is followed by ‘The biggest mystery thriller since Gone Girl’ – Elle.

The description and the blurb sounded intriguing and pulled me in as soon as I read them. But… Whatever this story is, it is not a mystery or a thriller. It’s a fascinating story, that’s for sure, but in a ‘car-crash-I-should-look-away-but-I-can not' sorta way. Sure, there are one or two shocking and unexpected revelations (which for obvious reasons I won’t go into) in this book, but most of what the reader gets is revealed in the blurb and in the first chapter.

This is the story of a family in crisis. Of a father becoming so obsessively religious that he puts his children in mortal danger, and a mother who isn’t strong enough (or too devoted to her husband?) to interfere on behalf of her children. It gives a fascinating view of how the circumstances affect every child a little differently. While they all suffer, they don’t suffer or deal with their suffering in identical ways.

Alexandra (Lex) – Girl A; the one who got away and saved her siblings.

Ethan – Boy A; as the oldest child he had privileges or was being groomed by his father to follow in his footsteps. He creeped my out, especially since he is referred to as a sociopath by one of his siblings. What creeped me out even more was that none of the siblings felt the need to warn his wife-to-be about the risks she faced if she married him.

Delilah – Girl B; described as a bit of a pretty airhead, she may have been smarter than the others in that she managed to charm those around her, including her father to some extent.

Gabriel – Boy B; ruined by his adoptive parents’ dreams of fame based on his nightmarish past as much as his horrific real family and everything that happened there.

Noah – Boy D; the only one young enough to have no memories of the horrors inflicted on the others and for that reason kept away from his siblings in an effort by his adoptive parents to give him a ‘normal’ life.

Evie – Girl C; the sibling closed to Lex.

Daniel – The only child without a chapter who would have been ‘Boy C’.

Of course, since the book is told only from Girl A’s perspective, we don’t necessarily get an accurate description of how her siblings experience and deal with their early years. All we know is what Girl A has observed and the conclusions she has drawn from that.

Although Lex’s escape and some of the horrors leading up to that moment are revealed very early on, there were huge stretches of the story where things didn’t seem that bad. The horror of their situation creeps up on the reader, just as it would have crept up on the children. As a result, the read became increasingly uncomfortable for me. I knew things had to get horrific in order to live up to both the book blurb and Lex finding the courage to escape the chains that bound her, but there was a long stretch where it was possible for me to believe that maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.

As I said, this book didn’t read as a mystery or thriller for me. It felt more like a character study; a description of how even when trapped in the same nightmare, all participants come out of it with different memories, different defense mechanisms, and different (lasting) consequences.

Finally, there is something I didn’t know before I started this book and now that I do know, I’m not sure how I feel about it. As it turns out, this story is based on a real-life domestic tragedy known as the Turpin family saga. Click the link if you would like to know more about that.

Overall, I’m not sure how I feel about this book. While it was a captivating read, it wasn’t at all what I expected. There were a few questions I would have liked a (clearer) answer to and, most frustratingly, I have no idea how the book ended. I mean, I read all of it, but I couldn’t tell you if that ending was hopeful or heart-breaking. The fact that I don’t really care what the answer to that conundrum is, explains my 3 ½ stars rating.