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House of horrors: Girl A, by Abigail Dean, reviewed

A much-hyped debut novel deals with the worst thing imaginable: imprisoned, tortured children hidden in plain sight.

• From magazine issue: 16 January 2021

Jenny Colgan

Abigail Dean

HarperCollins, pp. 336, £14

If the last quarter of 2020 saw a glut of novels published, of which there were winners (Richard Osman) and losers (in a just world, Piranesi would still be at number one), January is a less frenzied time for new writers to launch. Even so, there are often hyped and hot new books — among which this year Girl A is one.

It comes with excitable reports of huge international sales and an insistence that it will be everywhere . The accompanying blurb also manages to mention repeatedly that the author got a double-first at Cambridge, which, frankly, in these days of being ruled by Oxbridge inadequates who think that being there for three years means everything must be immediately handed to them, I would probably have skipped: the novel is better than the entitlement suggests.

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Girl A is a lovely, precision-tooled piece of kit. It has traces of Emma Donoghue’s Room and Lisa Jewell’s The People Upstairs , two books dealing with the worst thing any of us can imagine: imprisoned, tortured children hidden in plain sight.

Oddly, even though it deals in an obscenity, it’s actually easier to swallow than crime novels where women and children are casually slaughtered to prove how clever the police officer is. There is nothing casual about what happens here, and the victims are the heroes, in the most difficult, compromised ways imaginable.

It’s sharp and refreshing to have a female heroine who doesn’t have to be sexy and feisty. We never even learn what Alexandra looks like, and I found, unusually, I desperately wanted to know.

The shape of the novel is neat: after the death of the mother who stood by while her children were abused, the eldest, Alexandra, (or Girl A as she is referred to in newspaper reports) has to contact her surviving siblings and work out what to do with the house in which they all suffered. We follow the children’s varying trajectories, flash back to when things got so bad, and see how the horror played itself out over the decades.

The writing is clean and compelling, the choices interesting and fully fleshed out. The flashbacks are upsetting but not torture porn. More affecting are things in the outside world Alexandra cannot understand: why people would ever stop eating at a buffet; why they wouldn’t enjoy being in hospital, or why the nurse has to keep her face turned away.

It seems odd to describe such a book as profoundly entertaining, but stories have always dealt in gore and death and this is no exception. It’s terrific: finally, an Oxbridge graduate succeeding in doing something really, really well.

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Girl A by Abigail Dean

In Reviews by Aster March 9, 2021 8 Comments

Lex Gracie does not like thinking about her family. She does not like thinking about her past and she especially does not like thinking about her title of Girl A: the one who escaped and freed her siblings from the House of Horrors.

Life has continued for Lex and she has done a decent job avoiding her past including her parents, which is easy enough when one is dead and the other is imprisoned but when her mother dies and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, Lex is forced to face her past.

She is determined to turn the Horrors into something good but to start she must find her siblings. Who have they become? And what did the House of Horrors do to them all?

| Why Girl A   Is Worth Your Time

To preface, this is my longest review out and no, I do not understand why.  Girl A  by Abigail Dean is a light read despite revolving around child abuse, death, and mutilation. The Gracie children, three girls and four boys of varying ages, have grown up in a household with an increasingly abusive and insane Father. Girl A as the title suggests is the girl you follow in the story and this is a novel about a survivors journey afterward, not the horrors they faced. I think you will enjoy this novel if you want something directed towards post-recovery of abuse that is creepy but not that creepy within the context of the thriller genre.

This novel almost was a hit or miss because the premise is quite foreboding and suggests to the reader a much more dramatic and gut-wrenching story is in store but no, there is little cruelty and instead more introspective scenes. I determined this is actually a hit and worth your time because I find value in journey based stories and think others do too. This is a journey based thriller, not an insanity based thriller and in all is worth your time if you want a novel with a lighter thriller based concept whilst still remaining in that genre.

| Plot Progression

Girl A, aka Lex, is the protagonist of the novel. She is the eldest female and second oldest sibling who escaped and called the authorities. The plot is told with three types of narratives: Lex's general viewpoint, her interaction with her siblings which although told in present day still has a different writing style to it and flashbacks of her childhood and how it slowly decayed.

The plot has flaws, they are easy to spot if you read this. It lacks certain punch where needed and for a thriller, is a bit lacklustre with how nail biting it should have been. Maybe this is intentional and the dismissal or downplay of the torture the siblings faced is a coping mechanism for the protagonist or the plot may have benefitted from going a bit more deeply into how the past shaped the characters.

The plot based on how you see the above dilemma is either enjoyable or not. I found it enjoyable as the story really is more about Lex's journey after than the before. I found this plot to be solid and overall worth your time.

| Characters

The seven siblings are the focus of the novel with Lex leading the narrative. Lex is intelligent and a strong-willed individual who was classified Girl A the day of their rescue. There is Delilah - Girl B. Evie - Girl C. Ethan - Boy A and the oldest sibling. Gabriel - Boy B, Daniel - Boy C, and lastly Noah - Boy D. Seven siblings all with vastly different personality and growth after the rescue. I think how the siblings were written encapsulates multiple roads recovery can lead to and was understandable based on who the siblings were instead of just being a symbol of a path that could be taken. What I valued in the characters is that who they are shaped their future, not just their imprisonment.

Now, don't forget the parents. Father and Mother as they are called and you will have to make your own judgment call on them.

Outside of the Gracie family, there are also Lex's friends, psychiatrist, and employers. They are solid but not at the forefront of the story. In all, decent characters, well developed. I liked them and in the spoiler section will talk quite in depth about them and what I thought because I do have lots to say.

Main Genre | Thriller

Year Published | 2021

Rating | 6.5 / 10

Worth Your Time? Yes.

| My Thoughts

Warning: skip my thoughts for a spoiler free review..

I grew to hate and then appreciate  Girl A.  This is because I hated the ending and what happened to Evie and then I grew to recognise the complexity of the ending and what happened to Evie. I do not mind the ending as to me it demonstrates trauma is always a part of you and some days are better than others and some are worse. I liked the ambiguity of the ending and I liked who Lex the character was.

Can we quickly talk about Ethan? I have mixed feelings for this characters. Did he have Stockholm syndrome? Was he too terrified to go to the authorities because he had been compliant for too long? Or did he secretly like it? He had much more freedom than the other siblings, he held down one of his siblings during a beating and leads me to wonder who Ethan is at the core. I am not sure about Ethan morally but I do feel that the Mother had Stockholm syndrome and/or is a victim of domestic abuse leading her to not be able to call for help. She, I sympathised with but Ethan, I am not sure what to think. What do you think about Ethan?

Lastly, Evie. That in a twisted way was my favourite part of the novel because I did not expect it to happen. It added more complexity to Lex as a character, it demonstrated to me that Lex has being carrying Evie with her her whole life and I hope that the ending was Lex letting her finally be at peace and accepting the death instead of the alternative. The ending could have been representative of Evie saying goodbye or Evie beckoning Lex to join her. Quite interesting and ambiguous, really allows you as a reader to decide what happens.

That is why I put  Girl A  as a hit. I liked all of the questions that arose when I read this because it helped push a narrative regarding growth and allowed me as a reader to choose what I thought that narrative was. If you have read  Girl A , let me know and we can discuss it in the comments below!

| Your Thoughts

Did you decide that  Girl A   is worth a read? If so, let me know what you thought of the novel below! And check out My Thoughts once finished for guess what, my thoughts on this literary adventure!

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Was this worth an hour of your time? Because it was worth an hour of mine.

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I thought Girl A was very well-done. As someone who works in child welfare and has some background in trauma specifically, the disconnection from emotion is a very common aspect of survivors. The brain simply can’t process all of that trauma, which is why the children each have their own fiction that they believe. I think that just as Lex’s fiction is that Evie survived, Ethan’s fiction is that he did everything he could to get them out of the situation. There is an alternate interpretation that he was enjoying what was happening, and it’s hard to know from the outside. But I believe he could have blocked the memory of holding down Gabriel. The bursts of anger are extremely consistent with someone whose brain is being confronted with the discrepancies in a story it’s already rewritten.

What a solid comment to receive. I like your comment about the multiple alternatives to Ethan’s response to the situation, there is no guarantee what he perceived happening versus what Lex perceives as we never hear his viewpoint.

To me this book was memorable and has stayed with me. A few of my thoughts about some of the more ambiguous portions–I personally interpreted the ending to mean not that Lex was about to commit suicide, but that Evie would always be a part of her, no matter the state of Lex’s recovery. The father’s suicide–my thought was that he knew he had lost control, and probably in spite of his insanity felt a sense of guilt. One question I had was after the book of Greek myths was discovered–Lex ‘s father hit her in the stomach, but did he also sexually assault her as part of her punishment? I re-read that section and wondered if that may have been what happened, which perhaps would account for her preference to be hurt by her lovers, and possibly a lack of ability to have children.

hi, i recently finished this book and i scoured the depths of the internet looking for a comment like yours. because throughout the whole book i kept thinking that Noah was Lex’s son. i was lent a copy so i cant look it up, but i don’t remember that the mother was pregnant again after Daniel. also, there is some recurrent “the body remembers” narrative and the way Lex is nearly obsessed and also soft regarding Noah, Noah’s mum so protective… i do think, if that would be the case, that Ethan sexually assaulted her; hence the choking at his house, the hate that Dr. K has for him, and the tensions regarding the wedding. finally, it ties together with the idea of Lex not being able to have children if she suffered from a botched at home birth with awful consecuences. am i crazy? maybe. still! i had that deep conviction and i wanted to share.

I found the book highly overrated and very difficult to read. Call it realism or bleak topic or the natural consequence of what transpired. Whatever the reason, the characters are all utterly unlikable, including the protagonist. Lex had every reason to hate her mother, but before you even understand why, you learn that she couldn’t care less if her mother is dead. It rubbed me the wrong way in the opening chapter. There’s almost no emotion throughout the narration. The only exception is Evie’s story, whose character and relationship with Lex saves the book in my opinion. But that’s some 3/4th into the novel when I felt the first twinge of emotion and sorrow. The ending is very anticlimactic and falls flat. Nothing happens at the wedding, no reckoning with Ethan. The last paragraphs are too ambiguous for my taste. It clearly circles back to Evie, but what happens is anyone’s guess.

I agree with your point regarding the book being tough to read. I recall when reading that I found the separation between past and present confusing and it took a while for me to figure out the flow between before and after. And yes, many characters are highly unlikeable *coughs* Ethan *coughs* but, I overall found Lex to be a complex character and enjoyed the ambiguous ending. A good thriller that does complex emotion well that you may enjoy is We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker or if you want something a bit more in your face suspenseful with familial bonds as a key component of the novel, House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland is a great option. It is a bit more fantasy based but such a good book that I am going to recommend it anyway and overall hope one of those reads are more enjoyable for you than Girl A .

I just finished this book, too. I agree with all your thoughts. I liked the ending, and I guess that’s because of the ambiguity. Lex is an excellent character, and in fact all the characters are very complex and well developed. Of course, the grim description of the abuse did make me wonder about my own sanity that I would read this book of fiction. I do like thriller and psychological suspense, and this has definite elements of surprise, so it was true to the genre in that way, but other than the revelation about Daniel and evie’s deaths, there were not too many shocks. In fact, I kept anticipating some worse revelation about sexual abuse, which I’m glad never came. One of the flaws is that father seemed quite delusional and perhaps psychotic, and it is hard to imagine that he was organized enough to plan for discovery and had a lethal poison available at all times for himself. It is the one thing that doesn’t seem to make sense. I can’t imagine with his delusions, religious fanaticism and ego thinking that he should commit suicide, and I can’t imagine him being able to plan ahead at all. He wasn’t very functional by the end. Death by cop, in some hostage / blockade situation would make more sense to me. I would have also believed a murder/suicide attempt more than his own lethal poison ingestion.

What an insightful comment, I agree with your thoughts on the Father. I feel his demise would have made more sense if it was by someone else as the novel never indicated him to be one that planned ahead. Great points, glad you enjoyed the book regardless!

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Book Review: Girl A by Abigail Dean

By gabino iglesias.

There’s something about dark narratives about dysfunctional families that pulls readers in. It probably stems from a sense of empathy mixed with familiarity. However, some stories take dysfunction into places so dark and dangerous that readers aren’t pulled in; they’re brutally dragged. Abigail Dean’s Girl A belongs to this second group. A crushing tale that delves into the horrors of a devastating past and explores its impact on the present, this novel explores the very unique and complicated world of siblings coping with shared trauma.

Lex Gracie was lucky enough to escape a horrible childhood, so she doesn’t like thinking about her family. Instead of a regular life growing up, Lex and her five siblings grew up as prisoners of two sadistic parents who kept them locked in and under awful conditions. They were hungry and cold. In fact, she was cold so often that her body started growing hair to keep her warm. Lex, known as Girl A, managed to escape and saved her siblings in the process, but none of them really escaped the damage done by those years of abuse and deprivation. Lex’s father stayed in the horrible house, but her mother spent the rest of her life in prison. When the mother dies, Lex and her siblings get the house as inheritance. Together with her sister Evie, Lex wants to turn the evil house into a force of good, a space for children and art.  However, before that happens, the siblings will have to get through the scars they carry and learn to cope with their past, their differences, the secrets they keep from each other, and their shifting alliances. 

Girl A is a brutal look at a family whose history is as inescapable as it is horrible. The siblings wants to move forward, but having the house and Lex’s desire to do something with it will stir up memories that hurt, dark things that reach out form the past to affect who those kids grew up to be. Dean’s prose is stylish, but she pulls no punches and every time the narrative goes back in time, she ensures the horrifying atmosphere of the kids’ lives is seen on the page. 

This novel inhabits two different times. The first is the present, when Lex is forced to deal with the realities of being names her mother’s executor after her death in prison. She’s an adult woman who has done her best to move forward, but the scars of her childhood are still visible in her thoughts and demeanor, especially in the way she remembers her mother. Whenever the narrative is in this contemporary space, the prose is tense and dialogue carries a lot of the action, but it clear that the past is always present in some way. However, when the narrative inhabits the past—which makes it the present—the fear, isolation, and confusion are almost palpable. Lex is forced to deal with a horrendous reality in which everyday occurrences and minor problems are exacerbated by her situation. When this happens, Dean’s sharp, first person prose gets to the core of things unflinchingly, and that makes many passages memorable:

“My period posed a more significant problem. It came when I was ten; I had expected another few years to prepare myself. We had been informed, by a video in school, of the practicalities: the blood, the cramping, the sanitary products. It had seemed sterile and simple. Now I stood in the bath, half-naked and baffled. Nobody had mentioned the smell, or the clots, or what you were meant to do with one shower a week. I tried to reassure myself, in the same stern tone taken by the actress in the school video. It was a problem, and like any other, it would have a solution. For the time being, I lined my knickers with toilet paper and prayed. I was unconvinced about God’s credentials in this particular sector. I would need a better plan.” 

There are places where descriptions of places or Lex’s thoughts slightly bog down the narrative, but the strength of the writing makes even those slower moments enjoyable. Girl A is extremely bleak, but its bleakness never becomes overpowering and the story is gripping, so the pages keep flying even when things get extremely dark. This great debut announces the arrival of a strong new voice in psychological thrillers that’s not afraid to go into the shadowy corners where bad things happen…and their memories remain.

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If your car has defrosted vents on your side windows and side mirrors, turn them on as well.

It may take a few minutes for the air coming out to warm up.

This is my favorite book! I was so carried away by reading it that I completely forgot about studying. My parents are angry because my grades have deteriorated so much. I do not want to upset them, and I think that I will need the help of special services. A friend of mine recommends one good service and says that it will definitely help me.

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Book summary and reviews of Girl A by Abigail Dean

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by Abigail Dean

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Book summary.

She thought she had escaped her past. But there are some things you can't outrun.

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 home 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. For readers of Room and Sharp Objects , an absorbing and psychologically immersive novel about a young girl who escapes captivity–but not the secrets that shadow the rest of her life.

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Reader reviews.

"A tour de force, beautifully written, richly imagined, and compulsively readable. Add to this its grave sometimes ominous tone, and the result is unforgettable." - Booklist (Starred Review) "[Dean] skillfully brings the complicated relationships among the siblings as well as the secrets they share into dramatic relief. This assured psychological thriller marks Dean as a writer to watch." - Publishers Weekly "Abigail Dean wastes no time diving into the wreckage of the Gracie clan... [ Girl A ] often reads more like a slow-burn character study, though it's richer for it." - Entertainment Weekly "The height of a pandemic might not be the ideal time to read a novel about six English children held captive at home and abused by their deranged parents. But put your fears aside or you'll miss out on a stunning debut...compelling."- Washington Post "A riveting page-turner, full of hope in the face of despair." - The Guardian (UK) "A novel that's psychologically astute and written with flair. In the traditional new year battle between much touted first thrillers it's the clear winner." - Sunday Times (UK) "The biggest mystery thriller since Gone Girl ." - Elle (UK) "This gripping story about family dynamics and the nature of human psychology will hold you tight all the way through." - Good Housekeeping "Nothing short of astonishing... Rarely does a novel offer up such unique plotting, such heart-stopping psychological drama, and such a rich portrayal of its inhabitants. A modern-day classic." - Jeffery Deaver, New York Times bestselling author of The Goodbye Man and The Bone Collector "Fantastic, I loved it." - Paula Hawkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train "It is rare for a novel to be so deft yet devastating. A story of terrible control but also irresistible humanity, Girl A is a portrait of survival, intelligence and love, and it will stay with me for a long time. A book of deep feeling, and an astonishing achievement." - Jessie Burton, author of the New York Times bestseller The Miniaturist " Girl A is truly my idea of the perfect book: gripping and beautifully written, with complex (and often chilling) characters that are fully realised, and hard to forget. I'll be thinking about this for a long, long time, so… Believe the hype – it really is that good." - Katie Lowe, author of The Furies "A searing, gripping tale of love, loss and survival that exposes the bare bones of humanity and explores how victims cope long after the headlines stop rolling. One of the most compelling novels I've read in a long time." - Stacey Halls, author of The Familiars and The Foundling "Terrifyingly gripping." - Susie Steiner, author of Missing, Presumed and Persons Unknown "Emotionally complex and beautifully written, with shades of Gillian Flynn and Ali Land, the dark secrets of Girl A unfold with such cool confidence that I kept having to remind myself that this was a debut. Incredibly impressive." - Catherine Ryan Howard, author of The Nothing Man

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Author Information

Abigail dean.

Abigail Dean works as a lawyer for Google, and before that was a bookseller. She lives in London, and is working on her second novel.

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Book Review: Girl A by Abigail Dean

Each chapter is dedicated to one of the siblings, named in turn, starkly drawn by Lex’s observations, about their relationships, betrayals, guilt. After their escape, each sibling is put in a different adoptive home, their various fates weighted by the question of luck. They have all survived, but to what extent? At what cost? Noah, the baby, gets to grow up unaware of his past. Ethan, the eldest, capitalizes on his family’s trauma, writing articles about forgiveness. Gabriel is “troubled,” and Delilah curiously shows no outward signs of lingering trauma. Lex, the titular “Girl A” who was the first to escape, still has memories of her flight like “half remembered dreams” that wake her in the night.

The structure of the book’s short chapters moves back and forth through time, often uninterested in progressing plot, guided, instead, by Lex’s troubled attempts at relating her experiences. It is sometimes frustrating, but this feels deliberate, too, as another aspect of Lex on the page. As children, Lex and her siblings had watched their parents cover the clocks and windows of the house, a disorienting abuse technique that leaves her grasp on time shaky into adulthood. She often has trouble gauging the passage of time, or loses time completely, a common experience of trauma survivors, and that uneasy grasp of time is reflected in the seesawing structure until its sudden catapulting of tension halfway through the narrative.

Still, for all its darkness, there is tenderness, small moments of happiness between Lex and her adoptive father are welcome spots of light in these pages, but they do not “fix” her. That was, for me, the most startling element of this book. I found myself waiting with each chapter and turn for Lex’s pain to be made palatable, digestible for a general audience unused to the burden of trauma, but Dean’s writing holds no quarter for such things. She looks at a child tied to a bed, deprived of food, and she honors the very real consequences of those acts.

When Lex escaped, she ran through the quiet streets around her house, screaming, “trying to summon [neighbors] from their living rooms, from their sofas, from the evening news,” desperate to be seen. This book, too, tries to rouse its readers, begging us not to look away. Even when it’s painful. Girl A is by no means a light read. It is emotionally taxing, it is difficult, and it is devastatingly beautiful.

Publication Date: February 2nd, 2021

Publisher: Viking

Reviewed by Dan Mazzacane

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August 26, 2024

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Girl A: Abigail Dean on her shocking debut novel that's taking the book world by storm

Has this Google lawyer written the book of the year? The part-time author talks about the inspiration for her thriller about siblings who flee abusive parents and their ‘house of horror’

A bigail Dean was about to turn 30 when she suddenly realised that her job as a lawyer was using up all the oxygen in her life. “If I didn’t make a change,” she says, “I was going to still be there on my 40th birthday.” She took three months off, writing every day at Dulwich library in London, and ended up with the seeds of what would become her debut novel, Girl A.

“You don’t know me,” Lex, or Girl A, tells us as the novel opens, “but you’ll have seen my face. In the earlier pictures, they bludgeoned our features with pixels, right down to our waists; even our hair was too distinctive to disclose. But the story and its protectors grew weary, and in the danker corners of the internet we became easy to find.”

Lex’s mother, we are told, has just died in prison, and as Lex visits to collect her possessions and learn about her will, she remembers the last time she saw her: it was the day she and her siblings escaped from the family home where they had been chained, after a heart-stopping, agonising leap from a window. “Slowly, I straightened, and pulled my T-shirt down towards my knees, and there, at the kitchen door, was Mother. I waited for her to run at me, but she didn’t. Her mouth was moving, but I could only hear the blood in my ears. We looked at one another for a long last second, then I turned and ran.”

A literary thriller expected to take the book world by storm, Girl A is less about the horrors Lex Gracie and her many siblings endured at the hands of their father, and more about how the nightmare follows them into adulthood. Lex, who narrates, is a successful lawyer who hopes to turn their “house of horrors” experience into a force for good.

As a true-crime follower, Dean drew inspiration from a number of real-life cases, from serial killers Fred and Rosemary West to the more recent case of David and Louise Turpin, the Californian parents who in 2019 were given life sentences for torturing and abusing 12 of their 13 children. The Turpins shackled their offspring to their beds, the alarm being raised by their 17-year-old daughter who broke free. Dean also read about Jasmine Block, the teenager who swam across a lake in Minnesota after being held captive for a month.

“From those cases and a few others,” says Dean, “I saw the power of teenage girls to escape and be incredibly strong. That was something I wanted to think about in terms of Lex, her resilience and intelligence in the face of a devastating experience.” But Dean ultimately wanted the book to be “about hope rather than, ‘Will they or will they not get out of the house?’ So you have the reassurance at the start that Lex is OK, then it’s a case of the years that follow – what then? Once the headlines have been recycled, what happens to the people who have been at the heart of these things? How do you live in the aftermath of that?”

An only child who grew up in the village of Hayfield in Derbyshire, Dean has always had an interest in brothers and sisters. She wanted to “capture that chemistry between siblings – Lex has a wildly different relationship with each of her brothers and sisters, for better or worse”. She researched how the experience of captivity might affect each Gracie child differently, and considered how she might have reacted herself.

“I don’t think it’s a straightforward question, which of the siblings’ paths I would have followed. You always want to think, ‘I’d be the Lex of the story, I’d cope well and with grace.’ But I’m not sure I would.” Dean says the eldest brother Ethan, who becomes an academic, was very enjoyable to write. Girl A traces his journey from a boy at odds with his controlling, religious father, to one who does what he has to do to survive, to an adult who exploits his past while keeping part of it hidden. “I always used to think that it would be you who would save us,” Lex tells him. “I waited. I would think – he isn’t even restrained. Any day now.” Dean says: “Ethan really behaves questionably, both in the house and after, in the way he manipulates the press attention.”

As a child, Dean wrote all the time, getting into fan fiction as a teenager (Final Fantasy stuff, she admits – she was a big gamer at the time). But after she got into Cambridge, where she studied English literature, she felt too daunted to continue. “It went on the back burner,” she says. “I found the creative writing scene at Cambridge quite intimidating and something I felt I wasn’t really good enough for.”

She took a law conversion course after finishing her degree and ended up focusing on technology law. “Certainly, throughout my late 20s, it was very much a 24/7 job. That was one of the reasons I started writing. Coming up to my 30th birthday, I was travelling a lot for work, doing incredibly long hours. I started to miss out on the things that made me happy. Taking three months off was partly to recover – I don’t think I was in a wonderful state – but also just to return to this thing I loved, writing, and see what happened.”

After three months, she had the bones of the novel, but it would take another year to finish the first draft of Girl A, during which time she started a new job as a lawyer for Google. “It’s a different kind of job with different hours. So I had evenings and weekends to chip away at the story. It was a great balance. I fell back in love with working – and I was also doing something that made me deeply happy, in terms of writing. I had liked the 25-minute walk to Dulwich library and the idea of a routine. But I had to become much less precious about writing once I was at Google. The second half of Girl A was written in the spare bedroom of my flat, or on the notes section of my phone on buses and tubes.”

In June 2019, she sent the book out to agents and it ended up in a nine-way auction in the UK, where it sold for a “major” six-figure sum. North American rights went for seven figures, and more than 20 other territories have acquired the book, with screen rights going to Sony. Dean was on a work trip for Google in India, in a taxi in a rural area with no reception, when her agent started trying to get in touch to tell her the news. The experience, she says, was “just as crazy and surreal as you might imagine”.

Dean is 32 now and working on her second novel, but continues in her role at Google. These days, she’s enjoying the law. “I didn’t think about stopping, to be honest. Working with contracts and words all day is, for me, complementary to writing. Legal work forces you to think about every word in every sentence, and how they might be interpreted, which is helpful.”

January is traditionally the month when publishers launch the debut novels they think will be huge. It happened six years ago with Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train , a book that, along with 2012’s Gone Girl, triggered a deluge of thrillers with “girl” in the title. Industry magazine The Bookseller reckons Girl A, the latest in the line, will be “one of the biggest” fiction debuts of 2021.

Dean is “90% incredibly excited, 10% terrified” about seeing her story out in the world. “You spend so long with these characters,” she says. “It’s like a small obsession. I almost think about them all the time. It’s incredible that these people, who have been so real to me for years, will become real to other people. I’ve loved and detested numerous characters in my lifetime of reading. The idea that people will have equivalent feelings about my characters is just wonderful.”

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Book review: Girl A by Abigail Dean

There’s been a bit of buzz around Girl A by Abigail Dean. That can be both a good and bad thing. I read it earlier than planned as I was excited about it, but at the same time I probably had heightened expectations as a result.

For much of this book I wasn’t sure if I was reading about a cult, or about kidnapped children. Dean keeps it pretty vague for a while and readers are on edge, recognising that we don’t have the full story. Waiting for more.

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. 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 six siblings – and with the childhood they shared.

The book is narrated by Alexandra (Lex), Girl A. We learn the children were known as, Boys A – D and Girls A – C. In order of age. After their rescue fifteen years earlier attempts were made to keep their identities secret and lives private, but though some like Lex preferred anonymity, some opted to live firmly ‘in’ the spotlight.

I spent much of the book wondering why Lex and her family had attracted so much attention, and I know it sounds terrible that I wanted more trauma than initially offered. There’s mention of the kids being chained up at some point but for much of their childhood it seemed they (just) lived with an incredibly strict delusional father and a subservient mother.

I couldn’t entirely understand how the Gracie family was viewed with such horror. And in some ways it’s probably a lesson in extremism. How someone (‘Father’ in this instance) who’s very religious and rigid and in his beliefs—which he is in their younger years—can be influenced by others and those traits magnified to terrorise those around them.

So eventually we get some more insight into Father’s disintegration as his disappointments mount and understand how dire the last couple of years of the kids’ lives were in the Gracie house of horrors.

And of course we also learn more about Lex and her siblings. How they dealt with ‘life’ with Mother and Father and how they thrived – or otherwise – after they were freed. There’s something really interesting about the way each of the siblings handle what’s happened to them and who they’ve become as a result.

I must confess the layout confused me a little at times, as Dean introduces a new sibling and there’s usually a flashback. Sometimes however some of that is from Lex’s point of view (as a child) or we’ve switched back to Lex in the present and it’s not been clear. I’m not sure if it’s as simple as layout or formatting. I was really only confused once or twice when something didn’t make sense and I had to re-read it and realise the memory had finished and we were back in the present.

Dean writes well and her background in law means that element (and Lex’s world) feels realistic. But it took a very long time for me to get really engaged in this book. It’s an enjoyable read but I think I’d introduce more of the detail about the family’s final years earlier, even just via more references to how bad things get, so there’s more of a sense of menace or dread. Of course whether that makes what comes more powerful or whether it means it’s too little too late might vary from reader to reader.

There’s a great twist towards the end and I’d certainly keep that there as it’s quite shocking and Dean does a good job at having the now and then meet at the perfect time. However, because I enthusiastically read this a while ago I went back to some of the earlier chapters to re-read them to write this review. In retrospect, now that I know the twist I would probably suggest some changes to formatting of earlier chapters. I feel like we should be able to go back and re-read it knowing the whole context and realise we were fooled, rather than have it not make sense. Again however, that’s only on re-reading and not something you’d be aware of at the time.

Girl A by Abigail Dean will be published in Australia by Harper Collins and available from 20 January 2021.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes. 

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Girl A: A Novel Kindle Edition

• Print length 352 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Penguin Books
• Publication date February 2, 2021
• File size 4793 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com review, about the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved..

You don't know me, but you'll have seen my face. In the earlier pictures, they bludgeoned our features with pixels, right down to our waists; even our hair was too distinctive to disclose. But the story and its protectors grew weary, and in the danker corners of the Internet we became easy to find. The favored photograph was taken in front of the house on Moor Woods Road, early on a September evening. We had filed out and lined up, six of us in height order and Noah in Ethan's arms, while Father arranged the composition. Little white wraiths squirming in the sunshine. Behind us, the house rested in the last of the day's light, shadows spreading from the windows and the door. We were still and looking at the camera. It should have been perfect. But just before Father pressed the button, Evie squeezed my hand and turned up her face toward me; in the photograph, she is just about to speak, and my smile is starting to curl. I don't remember what she said, but I'm quite sure that we paid for it, later.

I arrived at the prison in the midafternoon. On the drive I had been listening to an old playlist made by JP, Have a Great Day, and without the music and the engine, the car was abruptly quiet. I opened the door. Traffic was building on the motorway, the noise of it like the ocean.

The prison had released a short statement confirming Mother's death. I read the articles online the evening before, which were perfunctory, and which all concluded with a variation of the same happy ending: the Gracie children, some of whom have waived their anonymity, are believed to be well. I sat in a towel on the hotel bed with room service on my lap, laughing. At breakfast, there was a stack of local newspapers next to the coffee; Mother was on the front page, underneath an article about a stabbing at Wimpy Burger. A quiet day.

My room included a hot buffet, and I kept eating right up until the end, when the waitress told me that the kitchen had to begin preparing for lunch.

"People stop for lunch?" I asked.

"You'd be surprised," she said. She looked apologetic. "Lunch isn't included with the room, though."

"That's okay," I said. "Thanks. That was really good."

When I started my job, my mentor, Julia Devlin, told me that the time would come when I would tire of free food and free alcohol; when my fascination with platters of immaculate canapŽs would wane; when I would no longer set my alarm to get to a hotel breakfast. Devlin was right about a lot of things, but not about that.

I had never been to the prison before, but it wasn't so different from what I had imagined. Beyond the car park were white walls, crowned with barbed wire, like a challenge from a fairy tale. Behind that, four towers presided over a concrete moat, with a gray fort at its center. Mother's little life. I had parked too far away and had to walk across a sea of empty spaces, following the thick white lines where I could. There was only one other car in the lot, and inside it there was an old woman, clutching the wheel. When she saw me, she raised her hand, as if we might know each other, and I waved back.

Underfoot, the tarmac was starting to stick. By the time I reached the entrance, I could feel sweat in my bra and in the hair at the back of my neck. My summer clothes were in a wardrobe in New York. I had remembered English summers as timid, and every time I stepped outside, I was surprised by bold blue sky. I had spent some time that morning thinking about what to wear, stuck, half-dressed, in the wardrobe mirror; there really wasn't an outfit for every occasion, after all. I had settled on a white shirt, loose jeans, shop-clean trainers, obnoxious sunglasses. Is it too jovial? I asked Olivia, texting her a picture, but she was in Italy, at a wedding on the walls of Volterra, and she didn't reply.

There was a receptionist, just like in any other office. "Do you have an appointment?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "With the warden."

"With the director?"

"Sure. With the director."

"Are you Alexandra?"

"That's me."

The warden had agreed to meet me in the entrance hall. "There's a reduced staff on Saturday afternoons," she had said. "And no visitors after three p.m. It should be quiet for you."

"I'd like that," I said. "Thanks."

"I shouldn't say this," she said, "but it would be the time for the great escape."

Now she came down the corridor, filling it. I had read about her online. She was the country's first female warden of a high-security facility, and she had given a few interviews after her appointment. She had wanted to be a police officer at a time when height restrictions were still in force, and she was two inches under. She had discovered that she was still tall enough to be a prison officer, which was illogical, but okay with her. She wore an electric blue suit-I recognized it from the pictures accompanying the interviews-and strange, dainty shoes, as if somebody had told her they might soften her impression. She believed-absolutely-in the power of rehabilitation. She looked more tired than in her photographs.

"Alexandra," she said, and shook my hand. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

"I'm not," I said. "So don't worry about it."

She gestured back from where she had come. "I'm just by the visitors' center," she said. "Please."

The corridor was a tepid yellow, scuffed at the baseboards and decorated with shriveled posters about pregnancy and meditation. At the end there was a scanner, as well as a conveyor belt for your belongings. Steel lockers to the ceiling. "Formalities," she said. "At least it's not busy."

"Like an airport," I said. I thought of the service in New York, two days before: my laptop and phones in a gray tray and the neat, transparent bag of makeup that I set beside them. There were special lanes for frequent flyers, and I never had to queue.

"Just like that," she said. "Yes."

She unloaded her pockets onto the conveyor belt and passed through the scanner. She carried a security pass, a pink fan, and a children's sunscreen. "A whole family of redheads," she said. "We're not built for days like this." In her pass photograph she looked like a teenager, eager to begin her first day of work. My pockets were empty. I followed her straight through.

Inside, too, there was no one around. We walked through the visitors' center, where the plastic tables and secured chairs awaited the next session. At the end of the room was a metal door, without windows; somewhere behind that, I assumed, was Mother and the confines of each of her small days. I touched a chair as we passed and thought of my siblings, waiting in the stale room for Mother to be presented to them. Delilah would have reclined here, on many occasions, and Ethan had visited once, although only for the nobility of it. He had written a piece for The Sunday Times afterward, titled "The Problems with Forgiveness," which were many and predictable.

The warden's office was through a different door. She touched her pass to the wall and patted herself down for a final key. It was in the pocket above her heart, attached to a plastic frame that held a photo full of redheaded children. "Well," she said. "Here we are."

It was a simple office, with pockmarked walls and a view to the motorway. She seemed to have recognized this and decided that it wouldn't do; she had brought in a stern wooden desk and an office chair, and she had found a budget for two leather sofas, which she would need for delicate conversations. On the walls were her certificates and a map of the United Kingdom.

"I know that we haven't met before," the warden said, "but there's something I want to say to you before the lawyer joins us."

She gestured to the sofas. I despised formal meetings on comfortable furniture; it was impossible to know how to sit. On the table in front of us was a cardboard box and a slim brown envelope bearing Mother's name.

"I hope that you don't think that this is unprofessional," the warden said, "but I remember you and your family on the news at the time. My children were just babies then. I've thought about those headlines a lot since, even before this job came up. You see a great many things in this line of work. Both the things that make the papers and the things that don't. And after all this time, some of those things-a very small number-surprise me. People say: How can you still be surprised, even now? Well, I refuse not to be surprised."

She took her fan from the pocket of her suit. Closer, it looked like something handmade by a child, or possibly by a prisoner. "Your parents surprised me," she said.

I looked past her. The sun teetered at the edge of the window, about to fall into the room.

"It was a terrible thing that happened to you," she said. "From all of us here-we hope that you might find some peace."

"Should we talk," I said, "about why you called me?"

The solicitor was poised outside the office, like an actor waiting for his cue. He was dressed in a gray suit and a cheerful tie, and sweating. The leather squeaked when he sat down. "Bill," he said, and stood again to shake my hand. The top of his collar had started to stain, and now that was gray, too. "I understand," he said, right away, "that you're also a lawyer." He was younger than I had expected, maybe younger than me; we could have studied at the same time.

"Just company stuff," I said, and to make him feel better: "I don't know the first thing about wills."

"That," Bill said, "is what I'm here for."

I smiled, encouragingly.

"Okay!" Bill said, and rapped the cardboard box. "These are the personal possessions," he said. "And this is the document."

He slid the envelope across the table, and I tore it open. The will read, in Mother's trembling hand, that Deborah Gracie appointed her daughter Alexandra Gracie as executor of this will; that Deborah Gracie's remaining possessions consisted of, first, those possessions held at HM Prison Northwood; second, approximately twenty thousand pounds inherited from her husband, Charles Gracie, upon his death; and third, the property found at 11 Moor Woods Road, in Hollowfield. Those possessions were to be divided equally among Deborah Gracie's surviving children.

"Executor," I said.

"She seemed quite sure that you were the person for the job," Bill said.

See Mother in her cell, playing with her long, long blond hair, right down to her knees; so long that she could sit on it, as a party trick. She considers her will, presided over by Bill, who feels sorry for her, who is happy to help out, and who is sweating then, too. There is so much that he wants to ask. Mother holds the pen in her hand and trembles in studied desolation. Executor, Bill explains. It's something of an honor. But it's also an administrative burden, and there will need to be communications with the various beneficiaries. Mother, with the cancer bubbling in her stomach and only a few months left to fuck us over, knows exactly whom to appoint.

"There is no obligation for you to take this up," Bill said. "If you don't want to."

"I'm aware of that," I said, and Bill's shoulders shifted.

"I can guide you through the basics," he said. "It's a very small portfolio of assets. It shouldn't take up too much of your time. The key thing-the thing that I'd bear in mind-is to get the beneficiaries' agreement. However you decide to handle those assets, you get your siblings' go-ahead first."

I was booked on a flight back to New York the next afternoon. I thought of the cold air on the plane and the neat menus that were handed out just after takeoff. I could see myself settling into the journey, the prior three days deadened by the drinks in the lounge, and waking up to the warm evening and a black car waiting to take me home.

"I need to consider it," I said. "It's not a convenient time."

Bill handed me a slip of paper, his name and number handwritten on pale gray lines. Business cards were not in the prison's budget. "I'll wait to hear from you," he said. "If it's not you, then it would be helpful to have suggestions. One of the other beneficiaries, perhaps."

I thought of making this proposal to Ethan, or Gabriel, or Delilah. "Perhaps," I said.

"For a start," Bill said, holding the box in his palm, "these are all her possessions at Northwood. I can release them to you today."

The box was light.

"They're of negligible value, I'm afraid," he said. "She had a number of goodwill credits-for exemplary behavior, things like that-but they don't have much value outside."

"That's a shame," I said.

"The only other thing," the warden said, "is the body."

She walked to her desk and pulled out a ring-bound file of plastic wallets, each of them containing a flyer or a catalog. Like a waiter with a menu, she opened it before me, and I glimpsed somber fonts and a few apologetic faces.

"Options," she said, and turned the page. "If you'd like them. Funeral homes. Some of these are a bit more detailed: services, caskets, things like that. And they're all local-all within a fifty-mile radius."

"I'm afraid there's been a misunderstanding," I said.

The warden shut the file, on a leaflet featuring a leopard-print hearse.

"We won't be claiming the body," I said.

"Oh," Bill said.

If the warden was perturbed, she hid it well. "In that case," she said, "we would bury your mother in an unmarked grave, according to default prison policy. Do you have any objections to that?"

"No," I said. "I don't have any objections."

My other meeting was with the chaplain, who had requested to see me. She had asked me to come to the visitors chapel, which was in the car park. One of the warden's assistants accompanied me to a squat outbuilding. Somebody had erected a wooden cross above the door and hung colored tissue paper across the windows. A childÕs stained glass. Six rows of benches faced a makeshift stage, with a fan and a lectern and a model of Jesus, mid-crucifixion.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08H18WHX5
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books (February 2, 2021)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 2, 2021
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 4793 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
• #446 in Women's Crime Fiction
• #734 in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction
• #1,034 in Women's Literary Fiction

About the author

Abigail dean.

Abigail Dean was born in Manchester and grew up in the Peak District. She was formerly a Waterstones bookseller and a lawyer for Google. Her first novel, GIRL A, was a New York Times and Sunday Times top ten bestseller and a Kindle number 1 bestseller. It was chosen as a Best Book of 2021 by the Times, FT, Guardian, Independent, Stylist, and more. The rights to GIRL A sold in 36 territories and a television series is being adapted with Sony. Abigail's second novel, DAY ONE, will be published in March 2024.

Abigail lives in London and is working on her third novel. She has always loved reading, writing, and talking about books. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @AbigailSDean.

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Customers find the reading experience fantastic. They also disagree on the plot, with some finding it a pretty good tale, disturbing on many levels, and going nowhere from the beginning. Opinions are mixed on the emotional tone, characterization, and writing style. Some find the story compelling and heart-wrenching, while others say it's sad.

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Customers find the book a fantastic read with developed characters. They also say it's worth every bit of time it takes to read it.

"...Solid story with richly developed characters and worth every bit of time it takes to read this book! Highly recommend!" Read more

"...I was in a bad slump of not finding anything good to read in this book was great . It is a page turner." Read more

"I loved this story it was so well written, it is definitely worth reading . wow what a story read it!" Read more

"...That's why I was quite surprised by the issues the kids faced. Good read , but as I stated earlier, it could be a bit confusing jumping back..." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the plot. Some find it captivating, interesting, and scary. They also say the fiction reads like fact and is a brave telling of dark matter. However, others say the story goes nowhere from the beginning, keeps them waiting for something to happen, and the writing is not the best.

"...This book is so well written it engaged me from the start. It is compelling and ultimately heart-wrenching; we are left with room to heal and an..." Read more

"...You run the gamut of emotions but never feel manipulated. Solid story with richly developed characters and worth every bit of time it takes to read..." Read more

"The story jumped around alot which made it hard to follow. It also did not explain as the reason for the abuse of their family...." Read more

"...That said, it is a pretty good tale , no doubt inspired by the story of that crazy couple in California who had a bunch of kids and kept them locked..." Read more

Customers are mixed about the writing style. Some find the story well written and believable, while others say the author makes it difficult to follow at times and hard to get used to. They also mention the book is painful to read and has lots of unanswered questions.

"...This book is so well written it engaged me from the start...." Read more

"The story jumped around alot which made it hard to follow . It also did not explain as the reason for the abuse of their family...." Read more

"...The writing itself is good .I through 58% of the book often hemming and hawing whether to continue or not...." Read more

"I found the book a bit hard to follow at times Lots of places where she went from the present time back to when she lived at the family home until..." Read more

Customers have mixed feelings about the emotional tone of the book. Some find it compelling and heart-wrenching, while others say it's disturbing and hard to follow.

"...It is compelling and ultimately heart-wrenching ; we are left with room to heal and an overwhelming sadness. We have dealt with horror." Read more

"I gave it 4 stars because I can’t give it 4.5 and it’s a little too depressing for 5 ...." Read more

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Customers are mixed about the characterization. Some mention that the story has richly developed characters, while others say that the book has many characters to keep straight.

"...It was well written, captivating even. But every character is broken , sadness on every page. I will not forget it easily." Read more

"...I felt that while many characters were well developed , I could have used much more time devoted to others...." Read more

"I loved this book. The character development was excellent , the story was moving, and I really didn’t want it to end...." Read more

Customers find the book length too long.

"...Problem #3: the chapter lengths ! OMG. It was like they were never-ending. At first, I thought that I had missed something but nope...." Read more

"...I felt it needed to be more structured there was few chapters , lots of unanswered questions, good for a first novel" Read more

"... Chapters were forever long , I feel they could have been broken up more. Not an easy read." Read more

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Girl A: The Sunday Times and New York Times global best seller, an astonishing new crime thriller debut novel from the biggest new literary fiction voice Kindle Edition

LONGLISTED FOR THE THEAKSTONS CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR

‘The year’s best debut’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘The best crime novel of the year’ INDEPENDENT ‘Sensational. Gripping, haunting, and beautifully written’ RICHARD OSMAN

CHOSEN AS A BEST BOOK OF 2021 BY THE TIMES, THE FT, THE GUARDIAN, THE INDEPENDENT, STYLIST AND MORE!

‘The biggest mystery thriller since Gone Girl ’ ELLE ‘The novel you’ll stay up reading until 3am’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘An astonishing achievement.’ JESSIE BURTON ‘Gripping, beautifully written perfection.’ SOPHIE HANNAH ‘A masterpiece.’ LOUISE O’NEILL ‘Fantastic.’ PAULA HAWKINS

‘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…

RIGHTS SOLD IN 36 TERRITORIES

SOON TO BE A TV SHOW DIRECTED BY JOHAN RENCK (Chernobyl)

‘Incendiary, beautifully written debut’ Guardian ‘Psychologically astute, adroitly organised, written with flair’ Sunday Times ‘Terrifyingly gripping’ SUSIE STEINER ‘Beautiful’ ADELE PARKS ‘Incredibly well written, devastating in a good way, and intriguing to the last page’ LIZ NUGENT ‘I was obsessed by it. As close to perfect as thrillers get’ JOHN MARRS ‘A gripping debut’ Oprah magazine One of Marie Claire , Waterstones and Grazia ’s best books for 2021 A Sunday Times No.2 bestseller for w/e 6/2/21 A New York Times bestseller

• Print length 334 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher HarperCollins
• Publication date 21 Jan. 2021
• File size 1432 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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Product description

‘Psychologically astute, written with flair. In the traditional new year battle between first thrillers it’s the clear winner’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘The novel you’ll stay up reading until 3am’ SUNDAY TIMES STYLE

‘Girl A will be huge. Powerful, evocative and accomplished debut’ SUNDAY EXPRESS

‘Incendiary, beautifully written debut’ GUARDIAN

‘[A] debut to keep an eye on’ PRESS ASSOCIATION

‘An unmissable debut. Absorbing and powerful’ DAILY EXPRESS

‘This haunting, bruising drama has a gut-punch of a twist’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

‘A powerful read, an astonishing debut’ PRIMA

‘A gripping and eerie read’ BBC ONLINE

‘A riveting page-turner, full of hope in the face of despair’ SOPHIE HANNAH for THE GUARDIAN

‘Rare, deft yet devastating. An astonishing achievement' JESSIE BURTON

‘A work of utter genius’ JOANNA CANNON

‘It’s a masterpiece’ LOUISE O’NEILL

‘Terrifyingly gripping’ SUSIE STEINER

‘Fantastic, I loved it’ PAULA HAWKINS

‘Dark and compelling’ JANE FALLON

‘Incredibly well written, devastating in a good way’ LIZ NUGENT

‘A scorcher of a debut’ EMMA GANNON

‘Girl A gives you no option but to put your life on pause’ STACEY HALLS

‘Pitch black, riveting, but with such a thread of tenderness’ BETH MORREY

‘A modern-day classic’ JEFFERY DEAVER

‘Beautiful and surprising’ ADELE PARKS

‘Insanely gripping’ MARIAN KEYES

‘Remarkable’ CHRIS WHITAKER

‘Tremendously accomplished’ JANE CASEY

‘Powerful, immersive’ HARRIET TYCE

‘Intense, haunting, powerful’ T.M. LOGAN

‘A gripping novel’ OPRAH MAGAZINE

‘The biggest mystery thriller since Gone Girl’ ELLE

‘Grips from the first page’ THE BOOKSELLER

‘One of 2021’s biggest debuts’ COSMOPOLITAN

‘A dark thriller with a heartbreaking twist’ RED

‘You won’t be able to put it down’ HELLO

From the Back Cover

About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved..

You don't know me, but you'll have seen my face. In the earlier pictures, they bludgeoned our features with pixels, right down to our waists; even our hair was too distinctive to disclose. But the story and its protectors grew weary, and in the danker corners of the Internet we became easy to find. The favored photograph was taken in front of the house on Moor Woods Road, early on a September evening. We had filed out and lined up, six of us in height order and Noah in Ethan's arms, while Father arranged the composition. Little white wraiths squirming in the sunshine. Behind us, the house rested in the last of the day's light, shadows spreading from the windows and the door. We were still and looking at the camera. It should have been perfect. But just before Father pressed the button, Evie squeezed my hand and turned up her face toward me; in the photograph, she is just about to speak, and my smile is starting to curl. I don't remember what she said, but I'm quite sure that we paid for it, later.

I arrived at the prison in the midafternoon. On the drive I had been listening to an old playlist made by JP, Have a Great Day, and without the music and the engine, the car was abruptly quiet. I opened the door. Traffic was building on the motorway, the noise of it like the ocean.

The prison had released a short statement confirming Mother's death. I read the articles online the evening before, which were perfunctory, and which all concluded with a variation of the same happy ending: the Gracie children, some of whom have waived their anonymity, are believed to be well. I sat in a towel on the hotel bed with room service on my lap, laughing. At breakfast, there was a stack of local newspapers next to the coffee; Mother was on the front page, underneath an article about a stabbing at Wimpy Burger. A quiet day.

My room included a hot buffet, and I kept eating right up until the end, when the waitress told me that the kitchen had to begin preparing for lunch.

"People stop for lunch?" I asked.

"You'd be surprised," she said. She looked apologetic. "Lunch isn't included with the room, though."

"That's okay," I said. "Thanks. That was really good."

When I started my job, my mentor, Julia Devlin, told me that the time would come when I would tire of free food and free alcohol; when my fascination with platters of immaculate canapŽs would wane; when I would no longer set my alarm to get to a hotel breakfast. Devlin was right about a lot of things, but not about that.

I had never been to the prison before, but it wasn't so different from what I had imagined. Beyond the car park were white walls, crowned with barbed wire, like a challenge from a fairy tale. Behind that, four towers presided over a concrete moat, with a gray fort at its center. Mother's little life. I had parked too far away and had to walk across a sea of empty spaces, following the thick white lines where I could. There was only one other car in the lot, and inside it there was an old woman, clutching the wheel. When she saw me, she raised her hand, as if we might know each other, and I waved back.

Underfoot, the tarmac was starting to stick. By the time I reached the entrance, I could feel sweat in my bra and in the hair at the back of my neck. My summer clothes were in a wardrobe in New York. I had remembered English summers as timid, and every time I stepped outside, I was surprised by bold blue sky. I had spent some time that morning thinking about what to wear, stuck, half-dressed, in the wardrobe mirror; there really wasn't an outfit for every occasion, after all. I had settled on a white shirt, loose jeans, shop-clean trainers, obnoxious sunglasses. Is it too jovial? I asked Olivia, texting her a picture, but she was in Italy, at a wedding on the walls of Volterra, and she didn't reply.

There was a receptionist, just like in any other office. "Do you have an appointment?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "With the warden."

"With the director?"

"Sure. With the director."

"Are you Alexandra?"

"That's me."

The warden had agreed to meet me in the entrance hall. "There's a reduced staff on Saturday afternoons," she had said. "And no visitors after three p.m. It should be quiet for you."

"I'd like that," I said. "Thanks."

"I shouldn't say this," she said, "but it would be the time for the great escape."

Now she came down the corridor, filling it. I had read about her online. She was the country's first female warden of a high-security facility, and she had given a few interviews after her appointment. She had wanted to be a police officer at a time when height restrictions were still in force, and she was two inches under. She had discovered that she was still tall enough to be a prison officer, which was illogical, but okay with her. She wore an electric blue suit-I recognized it from the pictures accompanying the interviews-and strange, dainty shoes, as if somebody had told her they might soften her impression. She believed-absolutely-in the power of rehabilitation. She looked more tired than in her photographs.

"Alexandra," she said, and shook my hand. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

"I'm not," I said. "So don't worry about it."

She gestured back from where she had come. "I'm just by the visitors' center," she said. "Please."

The corridor was a tepid yellow, scuffed at the baseboards and decorated with shriveled posters about pregnancy and meditation. At the end there was a scanner, as well as a conveyor belt for your belongings. Steel lockers to the ceiling. "Formalities," she said. "At least it's not busy."

"Like an airport," I said. I thought of the service in New York, two days before: my laptop and phones in a gray tray and the neat, transparent bag of makeup that I set beside them. There were special lanes for frequent flyers, and I never had to queue.

"Just like that," she said. "Yes."

She unloaded her pockets onto the conveyor belt and passed through the scanner. She carried a security pass, a pink fan, and a children's sunscreen. "A whole family of redheads," she said. "We're not built for days like this." In her pass photograph she looked like a teenager, eager to begin her first day of work. My pockets were empty. I followed her straight through.

Inside, too, there was no one around. We walked through the visitors' center, where the plastic tables and secured chairs awaited the next session. At the end of the room was a metal door, without windows; somewhere behind that, I assumed, was Mother and the confines of each of her small days. I touched a chair as we passed and thought of my siblings, waiting in the stale room for Mother to be presented to them. Delilah would have reclined here, on many occasions, and Ethan had visited once, although only for the nobility of it. He had written a piece for The Sunday Times afterward, titled "The Problems with Forgiveness," which were many and predictable.

The warden's office was through a different door. She touched her pass to the wall and patted herself down for a final key. It was in the pocket above her heart, attached to a plastic frame that held a photo full of redheaded children. "Well," she said. "Here we are."

It was a simple office, with pockmarked walls and a view to the motorway. She seemed to have recognized this and decided that it wouldn't do; she had brought in a stern wooden desk and an office chair, and she had found a budget for two leather sofas, which she would need for delicate conversations. On the walls were her certificates and a map of the United Kingdom.

"I know that we haven't met before," the warden said, "but there's something I want to say to you before the lawyer joins us."

She gestured to the sofas. I despised formal meetings on comfortable furniture; it was impossible to know how to sit. On the table in front of us was a cardboard box and a slim brown envelope bearing Mother's name.

"I hope that you don't think that this is unprofessional," the warden said, "but I remember you and your family on the news at the time. My children were just babies then. I've thought about those headlines a lot since, even before this job came up. You see a great many things in this line of work. Both the things that make the papers and the things that don't. And after all this time, some of those things-a very small number-surprise me. People say: How can you still be surprised, even now? Well, I refuse not to be surprised."

She took her fan from the pocket of her suit. Closer, it looked like something handmade by a child, or possibly by a prisoner. "Your parents surprised me," she said.

I looked past her. The sun teetered at the edge of the window, about to fall into the room.

"It was a terrible thing that happened to you," she said. "From all of us here-we hope that you might find some peace."

"Should we talk," I said, "about why you called me?"

The solicitor was poised outside the office, like an actor waiting for his cue. He was dressed in a gray suit and a cheerful tie, and sweating. The leather squeaked when he sat down. "Bill," he said, and stood again to shake my hand. The top of his collar had started to stain, and now that was gray, too. "I understand," he said, right away, "that you're also a lawyer." He was younger than I had expected, maybe younger than me; we could have studied at the same time.

"Just company stuff," I said, and to make him feel better: "I don't know the first thing about wills."

"That," Bill said, "is what I'm here for."

I smiled, encouragingly.

"Okay!" Bill said, and rapped the cardboard box. "These are the personal possessions," he said. "And this is the document."

He slid the envelope across the table, and I tore it open. The will read, in Mother's trembling hand, that Deborah Gracie appointed her daughter Alexandra Gracie as executor of this will; that Deborah Gracie's remaining possessions consisted of, first, those possessions held at HM Prison Northwood; second, approximately twenty thousand pounds inherited from her husband, Charles Gracie, upon his death; and third, the property found at 11 Moor Woods Road, in Hollowfield. Those possessions were to be divided equally among Deborah Gracie's surviving children.

"Executor," I said.

"She seemed quite sure that you were the person for the job," Bill said.

See Mother in her cell, playing with her long, long blond hair, right down to her knees; so long that she could sit on it, as a party trick. She considers her will, presided over by Bill, who feels sorry for her, who is happy to help out, and who is sweating then, too. There is so much that he wants to ask. Mother holds the pen in her hand and trembles in studied desolation. Executor, Bill explains. It's something of an honor. But it's also an administrative burden, and there will need to be communications with the various beneficiaries. Mother, with the cancer bubbling in her stomach and only a few months left to fuck us over, knows exactly whom to appoint.

"There is no obligation for you to take this up," Bill said. "If you don't want to."

"I'm aware of that," I said, and Bill's shoulders shifted.

"I can guide you through the basics," he said. "It's a very small portfolio of assets. It shouldn't take up too much of your time. The key thing-the thing that I'd bear in mind-is to get the beneficiaries' agreement. However you decide to handle those assets, you get your siblings' go-ahead first."

I was booked on a flight back to New York the next afternoon. I thought of the cold air on the plane and the neat menus that were handed out just after takeoff. I could see myself settling into the journey, the prior three days deadened by the drinks in the lounge, and waking up to the warm evening and a black car waiting to take me home.

"I need to consider it," I said. "It's not a convenient time."

Bill handed me a slip of paper, his name and number handwritten on pale gray lines. Business cards were not in the prison's budget. "I'll wait to hear from you," he said. "If it's not you, then it would be helpful to have suggestions. One of the other beneficiaries, perhaps."

I thought of making this proposal to Ethan, or Gabriel, or Delilah. "Perhaps," I said.

"For a start," Bill said, holding the box in his palm, "these are all her possessions at Northwood. I can release them to you today."

The box was light.

"They're of negligible value, I'm afraid," he said. "She had a number of goodwill credits-for exemplary behavior, things like that-but they don't have much value outside."

"That's a shame," I said.

"The only other thing," the warden said, "is the body."

She walked to her desk and pulled out a ring-bound file of plastic wallets, each of them containing a flyer or a catalog. Like a waiter with a menu, she opened it before me, and I glimpsed somber fonts and a few apologetic faces.

"Options," she said, and turned the page. "If you'd like them. Funeral homes. Some of these are a bit more detailed: services, caskets, things like that. And they're all local-all within a fifty-mile radius."

"I'm afraid there's been a misunderstanding," I said.

The warden shut the file, on a leaflet featuring a leopard-print hearse.

"We won't be claiming the body," I said.

"Oh," Bill said.

If the warden was perturbed, she hid it well. "In that case," she said, "we would bury your mother in an unmarked grave, according to default prison policy. Do you have any objections to that?"

"No," I said. "I don't have any objections."

My other meeting was with the chaplain, who had requested to see me. She had asked me to come to the visitors chapel, which was in the car park. One of the warden's assistants accompanied me to a squat outbuilding. Somebody had erected a wooden cross above the door and hung colored tissue paper across the windows. A childÕs stained glass. Six rows of benches faced a makeshift stage, with a fan and a lectern and a model of Jesus, mid-crucifixion.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07Z5J6SJ2
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperCollins (21 Jan. 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 1432 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 334 pages
• 1 in English Crime
• 1 in Crime Fiction (Kindle Store)
• 1 in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction

About the author

Abigail dean.

Abigail Dean was born in Manchester and grew up in the Peak District. She was formerly a Waterstones bookseller and a lawyer for Google. Her first novel, GIRL A, was a New York Times and Sunday Times top ten bestseller and a Kindle number 1 bestseller. It was chosen as a Best Book of 2021 by the Times, FT, Guardian, Independent, Stylist, and more. The rights to GIRL A sold in 36 territories and a television series is being adapted with Sony. Abigail's second novel, DAY ONE, will be published in March 2024.

Abigail lives in London and is working on her third novel. She has always loved reading, writing, and talking about books. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @AbigailSDean.

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Customers find the book compelling, gripping, and gritty. They also praise the writing quality as brilliant and well-written. However, some find the content boring and muddled, while others say it's hard to follow. Opinions are mixed on the plot, with some finding it brilliant and interesting, while other find it confusing and hard to understand. Readers also disagree on the emotional tone, with others finding it heart-wrenching and dark, while still others find it irritating and sour. They disagree on character development, with those finding them deep and interesting while others feel there's too much emphasis on them.

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Customers find the book compelling, moving, and well-crafted. They also describe the plot as stunning, unforgettable, and harrowing. Readers also mention that the book is thought-provoking, gripping, and gritty.

"Brilliant writing, horrifying story . I could not put this book down, I needed to know what happened to each child. Well worth a read!" Read more

"...However, the story is incredibly well told with sensitivity and you get a real sense of the mental impact and trail of thoughts that Girl A has...." Read more

"I was enjoying this book so much. It was a gripping read ...." Read more

" Compelling reading . An unimaginably distressing story told with such empathy...." Read more

Customers find the writing quality of the book well-written, outstanding, and poetic. They also say the book is expertly crafted in every way.

" Brilliant writing , horrifying story. I could not put this book down, I needed to know what happened to each child. Well worth a read!" Read more

"...Apart from the flitting time periods, this book is so well told . Intelligent storytelling." Read more

"...rescued is really insightful and emotionally pulling, making difficult reading at times ...." Read more

"A difficult read at times ,not much humour,alot of sadness, and very thought provoking...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the plot. Some find it insightful, brilliant, and hopeful, while others say it's not handled well in the narrative. They also say the book has an open ending but fails to offer sufficient surprise, insight, or resolution.

"...The book leaps from several different periods of time without any indication/change of font which is sometimes hard to follow and would need me to..." Read more

"...of each of the siblings many years after they are rescued is really insightful and emotionally pulling, making difficult reading at times...." Read more

"...It was a gripping read. The ending was so disappointing , I really thought I'd missed something, so I re-read the last chapter, and no, nothing missed..." Read more

"A difficult read at times,not much humour,alot of sadness, and very thought provoking ...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the emotional tone of the book. Some find it heart-wrenching, horrific, and dark, while others say it's disturbing, irritating, and revelling in depravity and cruelty.

"...An unimaginably distressing story told with such empathy. Breathtakingly sad but beautifully described.. I felt bereft on finishing it." Read more

"A difficult read at times,not much humour, alot of sadness , and very thought provoking...." Read more

"...many years after they are rescued is really insightful and emotionally pulling , making difficult reading at times...." Read more

"...It made me feel very uncomfortable ." Read more

Customers are mixed about the characterization. Some find the characters believable and sad, while others say there was too much emphasis on them and they didn't add much to the plot.

"...Firstly there are way too many characters all introduced at once ..." Read more

"This book is a truly brilliant debut novel. The characters are written beautifully , with the narrative switching back between their childhoods spent..." Read more

"... Little to no character development and I personally saw the twist coming from miles off!..." Read more

"...The characterisation is outstanding, each character is so real and their voice so distinctive...." Read more

Customers find the content boring, muddled, and annoying to read. They also say the book seems to plod along and feels half-finished.

"...There is a question hanging over the book, and a twist. Nothing thrilling , more a few reveals about a horrific story for 7 children and how they..." Read more

"...The parts of the book that have been created by the author are less interesting and not very convincing...." Read more

"...Over rated, confused, dull, nothing to make the reader read on ...." Read more

"...I also found each chapter far too long ...." Read more

Customers find the book hard to follow and difficult to put down.

"...of time without any indication/change of font which is sometimes hard to follow and would need me to reread paragraphs...." Read more

"...I have given 4 out of 5 stars only because I sometimes found it difficult to follow ; the jumping between the past and present wasn’t always clear..." Read more

"This novel should not be marketed as a thriller. It is quite a tedious unpleasant slog , leaping about in time, and written in a very confusing way...." Read more

"...long and the jumping between past and present was a little difficult to follow at times but overall this was a fantastic read" Read more

Customers find the pacing of the book slow, with no real flow. They also say it jumps from now to then and is disjointed.

"...It is quite a tedious unpleasant slog, leaping about in time , and written in a very confusing way...." Read more

"I found this a hard read. It jumps to and fro so often I kept thinking I'd missed something only to realise the author had just changed direction......" Read more

"...It’s not a fast paced read , but I found myself utterly gripped by the story and the characters...." Read more

"...The story itself, although descriptive, jumped around too much for me and the ending was incredibly strange...." Read more

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Books on the 7:47

Book review blog / author interviews / all things bookish, review: girl a by abigail dean.

• by Jen | Books on the 7:47
• Posted on January 20, 2021 June 16, 2021

All you need to know is: I devoured Girl A in a weekend. I just couldn’t stop reading this fantastic debut from Abigail Dean. It’s a psychological thriller with depth and drive. Some parts were very difficult to read but you just HAD to keep turning those pages to hear Girl A’s story.

Opening sentence: You don’t know me, but you’ll have seen my face.

Meet Girl A

The story opens with Lex Gracie (Girl A) having been made executive of her mother’s will after her mother dies in prison. Lex and her siblings are infamous for unpleasant reasons: they were held captive in their home, abused and starved by their parents. Their father ended his own life when Lex escaped aged 15 and raised the alarm. Their mother ended up in prison.

‘She wrote to you many times in those years,’ she said. ‘To you and to Ethan and to Delilah. I heard about you all. Gabriel and Noah. Sometimes she wrote to Daniel and Evie.’

What we then get is a really interesting story about what happens to people who have had an experience like this in their childhood. Each child reacts differently, remembers what happened in an individual way and are doing what they can as adults to thrive or just survive.

There are chapters about each sibling, all told through Lex’s POV, set both in the present day and in flashbacks that reveal what happened to lead their parents to commit such terrible acts against their own children. This was an excellently crafted part of the story. The abuse happened gradually, over years, to the point where, by the time it hit extreme levels, it was too late for Lex and her siblings to do anything.

Why didn’t you just leave when you had the chance?

Lex is the second eldest sibling and a damaged and complex character. Determined not to let what happened to her stop her succeeding in life, yet unable to stop the psychological damage that come with an experience. She is strong and resilient and wonderfully written.

Real-life inspiration

I have always been morbidly fascinated and appalled by real-life stories like this. I think it’s the level of corrupt human nature – I just can’t fathom that people exist who would do this. Prior to reading Girl A , I had heard of the Turpin family – a mother and father who abused and neglected their 12 children, truly horrific to read about. Author Abigail Dean says in this interview that she was partially inspired by this case.

Also, a book that sprung to mind while reading Girl A was Educated by Tara Westover. Not fiction – and not to the extreme levels of the story that Girl A tells – Educated is a memoir that details Tara’s life with her religious-zealot father who tries to contain and control his children.

The traumatic theme of Girl A is not the easiest to read about but the way Abigail Dean tells this story is wildly compelling. It is a dive into the deprived depths of human nature and the consequences for the people who are victims in that. I was totally immersed in this story and I know it will stay with me for a long time.

• Get your copy here
• Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC;
• Published by  HarperCollins  21st January 2021;

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Girl A (Book Review)

It didn’t take long for me to dive into this book. Truth be told after reading the synopsis I was already hooked.

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

“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. 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 six siblings – and with the childhood they shared.”

A family of seven children, all living in fear of making their father angry, terrified at the possibility of what this may bring onto each other. The situation escalating with the passing of the years as his distrust and suspicion deepens. Until finally a child escapes, manages to get help, and to bring rescue to her siblings in the process. They call her Girl A, she’s a survivor.

The children are now grown, but the insecurities and issues caused through their upbringing continue to cast a shadow over their lives. Each child handles the challenge differently, and some are more successful than others in overcoming the trauma.

As Girl A moves to connect with her siblings again, we meet each one and the curtain of what exactly happened all those years ago is gradually pulled back.

The storytelling by Abigail Dean in Girl A is as breathtaking as it is horrifying. An addictive read that won’t let you go until the last chapter has been read. It will leave you slightly breathless and I have no doubt that you’ll want to hug your own brother or sister tighter after you’ve turned the last page. A cracker of a book to start the year, Girl A is a must read to anyone who delights in the thriller or psychological drama genre.

Girl A is available from bookstores and online retailers for a recommended retail price of R330. I would assign a trigger warning to this book for abuse or neglect.

Thanks to Jonathan Ball Publishers for sharing this book with me.

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damppebbles.com

Crime fiction blog featuring book reviews and other fabulous booky things (with the odd psychological thriller and horror novel making an appearance), #bookreview: girl a by abigail dean @harperfiction @harpercollinsuk @1stmondaycrime #girla #firstmondaycrime #damppebbles.

“ ‘ Girl A,’ she said. ‘The girl who escaped. If anyone was going to make it, it was going to be you.’ 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. 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 six siblings – and with the childhood they shared. Beautifully written and incredibly powerful, Girl A is a story of redemption, of horror, and of love.”

Hello and welcome to damppebbles. Today I am delighted to be sharing my review of one of the most talked about books of 2021 so far – Girl A by Abigail Dean. Girl A was published by HarperCollins on 21st January 2021 and is available in hardcover, audio and digital formats. I chose to read and review a free copy of Girl A but that has in no way influenced my review.

Abigail Dean is one of the authors appearing at March’s First Monday event over on Facebook (the first gathering – although online – for 2021!). Read on to find out more and how you can get involved!

Girl A is a hugely popular book, and rightly so. It is exquisitely written, emotional and pulls the reader into the story of the Gracie children. It’s a book I was keen to read following a couple of really enticing blog reviews, and I’m so glad I did.

Lex Gracie is a survivor. A survivor of child abuse. She and her six siblings are the infamous Gracie children who were discovered in a house of horrors near Manchester. Malnourished, abandoned and neglected by their cruel, deluded parents. But Lex escaped and ran for help. And now she’s Girl A – her identity hidden from the press and the watching world. Her life picked apart and put back together again, along with the lives of her siblings. Years later, following the death of her mother, Lex is made executor of her estate and finally has to confront her past and the house which became her prison. The dream, with her sister Evie, is to turn the house of horrors into a community centre. But to do that Lex must visit each of her siblings and get them to sign on the dotted line. Can Lex relive her traumatic past to make a positive change for her future…

Lex is such a complicated character but I really enjoyed spending time with her. Despite numerous sessions with a psychologist, she still bears the painful scars of her traumatic past. And who could blame her?! Her distance from her siblings, except Evie, aides her continual healing. The reader watches on as she is no longer able to avoid the difficult confrontations she’s managed to distance herself from for years. For me, the journey with Lex, spending time with her and discovering what made her tick, was the highlight of Girl A .

The story is told in the past – from the early days when life was fairly quiet for the small Gracie family, all the way through to Lex’s brave escape – and the present, with an adult Lex meeting with her siblings after so many years and working out how to make them agree to the community centre. Each sibling bears their own scars, their own allegiance to a brother or sister who helped soften the horror they were suffering at the time. The dynamics of the family are very intriguing and the reader is drawn into the story with ease. There’s always a question mark over what really happened during the children’s imprisonment; those overheard conversations from another room, the bangs and crashes and the sudden, threatening silences.

Would I recommend this book? I would, yes. Girl A is an emotional and compelling read which I think true crime fans will particularly enjoy. It’s not a book of twists and turns (although I will say that I was able to work out one of the major twists a smidge before it was revealed) but a well-drawn and considered exploration of a trauma survivor’s life. Defined forever by another person’s twisted ways. An exciting debut novel from a writer to watch. Recommended.

I chose to read and review a free copy of Girl A . The above review is my own unbiased opinion.

Girl A by Abigail Dean was published in the UK by HarperCollins on 21st January 2021 and is available in hardcover, audio and digital formats (please note, the following links are affiliate links which means I receive a small percentage of the purchase price at no extra cost to you): |  amazon.co.uk |   Waterstones |  Foyles |  Book Depository |  bookshop.org |  Goodreads |  the damppebbles bookshop.org shop |

First Monday Crime Abigail Dean will be joining the panel for March’s First Monday Facebook event on Monday 1st March 2021 . Abigail will be appearing alongside Nadine Matheson (author of The Jigsaw Man ), Tim Glister (author of Red Corona ), Femi Kayode (author of Lightseekers ) and asking the questions will be Leye Adenle. The event is FREE of charge and will be held at 7.30pm on Monday 1st March via the First Monday Facebook page .

Girl A sold in the UK after a 9-way auction, and also sold at auction in the US. The novel has since been acquired in 27 other territories, and television/film rights have sold to Sony. Johan Renck, director of Chernobyl, is attached to work on the television adaptation of Girl A.

Abigail has always loved reading, writing, and talking about books. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @AbigailSDean.

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book reviews: mystery & thrillers

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My Life And Everything Within It

from two ladies who love to read

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21-year-old celebrating baptism drowns saving girl in distress in Texas lake: Police

A 21-year-old man drowned trying to save a teenage girl who was in 'distress' at lake waxahachie in texas on saturday..

A family is mourning after a man in Texas drowned when he jumped in a lake to try and save a teenage girl who was in distress, police said.

A 21-year-old man died around 12:45 p.m. on Saturday at Lake Waxahachie in Waxahachie, Texas, when he attempted to rescue the girl, who was part of a large church group from Garland, Texas, the Waxahachie Police Department said in a Facebook post .

The girl was eventually pulled out of the water by a Red Oak, Texas boater and revived after being given CPR, police said. She was taken to a hospital for further medical care.

The man was recovered from the lake and also taken to a hospital, but he would soon be pronounced deceased, according to the social media post. Police did not release the name of the young man.

"The Waxahachie Police Department, along with the entire community, would like to extend our deepest condolences to the victim's family," the Facebook post said.

The Tarrant County Medical Examiner identified the man as Lincer López, WFAA reported. USA TODAY contacted the medical examiner's office on Monday but did not receive a response.

GoFundMe created for drowning

A GoFundMe was started for Lincer Mejía López, and it identifies him as the man who drowned at Lake Waxahachie at 12:45 p.m. on Saturday. The page asks for the public's help to raise funds to transport López's body to his hometown of Chiapas, Mexico, where "his loved ones await."

López was the oldest of seven siblings, according to the GoFundMe.

"All Friends wish to express our deepest condolences to the family of LINCER MEJÍA LÓPEZ Thank you for your support and expressions of affection towards his family GOD BLESS YOU," the fundraiser page's description says.

The GoFundMe, which has a goal of $25,000, has already reached over $13,200 in donations.

'He was a hero'

López's family and friends told WFAA that he was at Lake Waxahachie that day for a baptism. Shortly after members of the church were baptized, the teenage girl with the group began drowning, prompting López to dive into the lake and save her, the Dallas-based TV station reported.

Jacobo López said his nephew was looking forward to his baptism so much that he could not sleep the night before.

"He was a hero," Jacobo López told WFAA. "He didn’t think twice about rescuing someone else. He didn’t think about the risk that he could die. And he did risk his life to save somebody else’s."

López would also send the money he earned from his construction job to his siblings in Mexico, Jacobo López told WFAA.

"He had just been baptized and gave his life to the Lord, and our family, we pray for his family, and we pray for the little girl's family," Jacobo López told the TV station. "And he was a strong boy, they should be very proud of him." 

Children’s Books

The Children’s Fantasy Novel That Flew Off Britain’s Shelves

“Impossible Creatures” has prompted comparisons to Tolkien, Lewis and Pullman, but action, not awe, is Katherine Rundell’s strong suit.

Cover illustration for “Impossible Creatures.” Credit... Ashley Mackenzie

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By Laura Miller

Laura Miller is a books and culture columnist for Slate and the author of “The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia.”

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IMPOSSIBLE CREATURES , by Katherine Rundell. Illustrated by Ashley Mackenzie.

Katherine Rundell, a fellow of St. Catherine’s College at Oxford, belongs to that university’s longstanding tradition of combining scholarship — her biography of John Donne, “Super-Infinite,” won the Baillie Gifford Prize — with writing beloved children’s fiction. “Impossible Creatures,” Rundell’s sixth novel for middle grade readers, became an instant best seller in her native Britain when it was published last year and has garnered numerous awards, including the Waterstones Book of the Year.

The novel begins as Christopher Forrester is packed off to stay at his grandfather’s estate at the foot of a steep hill in Scotland, little realizing that the hill contains a portal to a magically sequestered portion of the world called the Archipelago, islands inhabited by creatures from assorted mythologies. In a parallel story, Mal Arvorian, a girl born in the Archipelago and able to fly thanks to an enchanted coat, investigates signs that the islands’ magic, or glimourie, is fading. This endangers all the unicorns, mermaids, kankos and other fabulous creatures — including her pet, a baby griffin — who need glimourie to survive. Mal enlists Christopher in a journey to find the source of the diminishment. Soon, their party expands to include a surly ship’s captain, an oceanographer and a talking horned squirrel who serves as navigator.

The first book in a series, “Impossible Creatures” marks a departure for Rundell. Her previous novels have their fanciful elements, but this is her first work of fantasy. Oxford’s history of producing illustrious children’s fantasy authors has prompted comparisons of Rundell to J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman, but fantasy doesn’t feel like a natural fit for her. Rundell’s true antecedent is Robert Louis Stevenson, another author of thrilling yarns presented in confident, richly colored yet sleek prose.

In Rundell’s “The Explorer,” children survive a plane crash in the Amazon rainforest by building a raft and learning how to eat tarantulas. The heroine of the sublime “Rooftoppers” discovers a secret community of orphans living on the rooftops of Paris, including a boy who never sets foot on the streets and makes a waterproof tent out of pigeon feathers. In “The Good Thieves,” a professional pickpocket and two circus performers help a girl burgle the mansion of a mobbed-up robber baron in Prohibition-era New York.

Such doings may be improbable, but they’re not impossible, and much of the delight to be found in Rundell’s novels comes from the ingenuity and resourcefulness of her child characters when faced with the daunting constraints of reality. “Children have been underestimated for hundreds of years,” an old woman argues in “Impossible Creatures,” articulating a common theme in Rundell’s work. Another is the stifling demands of decorum, especially when imposed on Rundell’s wild, tomboy girls. Mal’s great-aunt and guardian (like many of Rundell’s protagonists, she’s an orphan) forbids “an immense, book-length list of things,” prohibitions Mal routinely defies. Christopher’s father (his mother is dead) is afraid of almost everything.

These complaints barely register before the plot of “Impossible Creatures” kicks into gear with a hired killer forcing Mal from her home and Christopher plunging through a passage in a lake and into the Archipelago. All this happens so hastily that the wonder of Rundell’s premise never has a chance to fully bloom.

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