This book follows Elise, the girl in the walls, as she comes to terms with hiding and avoiding the family who currently lives in her family home.

This house Elise knows like the back of her hand, she knows which floorboards creek, she knows how to get from one room to another using just the spaces between the walls.

Eddie is a teenager now and can't believe in ghosts, but he knows that there is something or someone there living in the house apart from his brother, Marshall, and their parents, Laura and Nick. He can't tell anyone because they won't believe him and they will call him a child.

This book is heartbreaking and beautiful. Gnuse had me biting my nails with tension and I was scared and nervous for Elise.

Marshall one day comes to sit with Eddie and asks him if he has noticed anything strange going on like food going missing and objects being moved around, Eddie confirms that he has noticed things, but when Marshall invites a stranger into their house to have a look around, everything starts falling apart.

This strange man hammers through walls and messes up their whole house and there is nothing Marshall and Eddie can do to stop him. Elise meanwhile, in the walls is trying to avoid this man who wants to catch her.

I loved the character growth in Marshall I feel that he actually started to become an adult, while he still makes childish decisions you can see his process and realize that he's not quite the adult he thinks he is.

Elise's growth is beautiful, I really felt for her throughout the book, and there were so many times that I wanted to scoop her up and take care of her.

There were a few times towards the end of the book that I thought would be good endings but the actual ending was very good!

This was not what I was expecting. I thought it would be a comforting read from the blurb about emotional connections and unconventional friendships, but it turned out to be a thriller that I wasn't expecting.

Elise lives in the walls of the house she used to live in before her parents died. Here she finds the nooks and crannies nobody sees to live and sleep in, steals things to eat and read, and uses the families lack of communication to get away with hiding in their house.

The Masons are a four-personal family. The Mum likes DIY and often gathers the family to fix the house up. The Dad is more placid. Marshall is their oldest son, 16, a moody teenager. Eddie is possibly autistic though not mentioned specifically in the book.

The book becomes a thriller when the boys think somebody is living in their house. This was unsatisfying, and I didn't love the ending. Overall, an OK book but didn't pack the emotional punch that I was expecting, relying more on tension and the thrill.

For me, I'm afraid this was a 2* OK read.

It's very literary and started really well. Elise is a young girl whose parents have both died and who now lives in the walls of the house. There are 2 brothers who now live in the house with their family and their tale is interwoven with Elise'. They sense and 'see' her, but, does she really exist? Things start to go wrong when they look to the internet to see how to get rid of her.

It's definitely an original idea and the writing is good. What I struggled with, was how slow it was. It really takes a good 45-50% of the book, before I felt really engaged and then, there were lots of loose ends.

There are some really good elements, overall though, not one for me.

Thanks to 4th Estate, William Collins and NetGalley for the opportunity to preview.

I really enjoyed the concept behind Girl in the Walls; following the tragic death of both her parents, Elise runs away from her foster home and back to the house that holds all the memories of her family. She lives in the walls, hides behind furniture and lives around the Mason family. Over time though, the Mason teenage boys grow more and more suspicious about missing food and feeling watched and seek to find out who is living with them.

This is actually an incredibly sweet book. Elisa is young and hurting and holding onto the love in that home built from the memories of her parents. she’s a character very easy to care about and you want her to heal, be safe and move on. I adored her. It’s also really clever how she navigates around the house around the family, although it also made very tense!! The house is essentially a key character in this story and you really get why it means so much to Elise, with the traces of her life contained in it. It’s also lovely seeing the family, their arguments and their relationships, straining and coming together and, like Elise, you feel like you’re intruding, peering in on them.

I enjoyed this, I enjoyed the writing and the pace and the themes of this book, this is a story about love, family, pain and healing and the marks our past leave. Thank you NetGalley for the copy to review

Well... this was an interesting read! Wee bit creepy too.
Elise is orphaned after a car crash. She runs away from her Foster home to go back to her home, her old home where a new family live.
The family find food disappearing, items missing. The house makes strange noises. Eddie and Marshall, 2 brothers, work together to find out whats going on. They know someone else is in the house. But their mother and father won't believe them. With the help of someone Marshall found online they will find whoever it is. They realise only too late that mr truat is out of control. Game of cat and mouse follows, Mr truat trying to find 'it' and elise trying to remain hidden.
Really enjoyed reading. Good ending too!
Thank you netgalley for a copy of this arc in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to net galley for this free read. I found this book quite unsettling at times but all the same interesting concepts.
The reader is introduced to Elise who lost both her parents in a car crash not long after moving house. Suddenly she is being taken to a foster home and all that she has known will be lost. Elise runs away to her old home where she was happy and comfortable with her parents. However there is a new family living here now. Elise knows all about the house structure and secret hidey holes and begins to live within the walls or the attic during the night and coming out when the family are asleep or out during the day.
The two sons realise that someone else is living in the house when items are misplaced and here the story takes a menacing turn when they ask someone to find out who or what is in the house. I won't say anymore but it is creepy and scary at times and a bit strange but all in all a good read.

This is a really unique and quite special story. At the beginning you have a sense of just being thrown into this story and it takes a while to find your feet, and get a grasp of what’s going on. Where are you? What time period? Who is living where? But if you just slow down and take your time the story brilliantly and slowly reveals itself to you and answers all these questions and more, and you find yourself immersed in a touching story full of family, growing up, loneliness and grief.

Left an orphan, Elise sneaks back to her old house in order to stay close to the home where she had happy memories? The only problem is that the house is now occupied by a new family. To stay hidden, she hides amongst the alcoves, listening to secrets in the walls and stealing crumbs to survive. A living ghost.

There's a sad tone that runs through the novel, permeating every page as we feel Elise's grief and loss. She feels safe in a house that is no longer here to own, instead filled with other children's laughter and love. It leads to a very lonely existence and I thought the author did a great job at conveying these emotions to the reader.

I did find the plot incredibly slow paced. This is firmly a character driven novel that rests on building a connection between reader and Elise, while also ramping up the gothic, creepy atmosphere. While I didn't think this was entirely well done as I struggled at the beginning, and I didn't find the conclusion to be wrapped up completely, I think overall the author did well, and the writing is easy to follow.

Some well written depictions of grief and longing, but the pacing and overall story falls a little short.

I had high hopes for the The Girl in the Walls — a "gothic" story about loss and loneliness. Sadly, I couldn’t connect with this book at all and found it to be not as atmospheric as I’d hoped. It started off very slowly for me and I could not resonate with the characters. I struggled through to the end, waiting for the plot to pick up or a character’s emotions to be more deeply explored, but this didn’t happen.

I received an e-ARC from the publisher, Fourth Estate, through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I loved 'Girl in the Walls', such a wonderfully, original concept. Although the idea of a person living inside your house, is decidely creepy and discomforting, I could not help but sympathise with Elise and her search for comfort by returning to her former family home. Thoroughout the tale, we learn more about the tragedy that claimed the lives of her parents and Elise imagines their voices as she manouvers throughout the home of the Marshall's.
There is an overiding sense of fear in the novel -
fear coming from Elise that she will be found by the Marshall's, made to return to social care,
fear coming from Eddie that there is 'someone' living in his home
and the reader's own fear on behalf of Ellie.
Along with focusing on how the characters deal with grief and loss.
With thanks to NetGalley and 4th Estate for an ARC in return for an honest review
In summary: An original and compelling story

This book is a big fat WOW. So original. So compelling. So atmospheric. So intriguing. So tense. So very different from anything else I’ve ever read. It’s already being touted as the big Gothic novel of 2021 — and Gothic is usually not my thang — but I can’t recommend this one enough. And to think it’s a debut novel! This book definitely deserved a sweet spot on my best-of list and it’s only down to the timing of me finishing it so very late in the year that it didn’t make it.

The premise wouldn’t normally have caught my attention, but I’m so glad I went against my ‘usual’ reading tastes: Elise is a young girl who loses her parents in a car crash, after which she moves into the walls of her former house. Eddie and Marshall are the brothers who now live in Elise’s old place and who are sensing that someone or something lives among them but whose parents don’t give the boys’ suspicions any credence. The tension steadily increases as Elise begins making mistakes, risking discovery, while the boys take a precarious decision in their venture to uncover the house’s mystery that will leave your skin crawling. The book’s climax coincides with a great storm and, well, it left me breathless.

This book is a tender examination of grief and loss, of family bonds and the memories that are held in the places where we grow up. It’s a beautiful coming-of-age tale, and I sincerely hope this book will blow you all away once it’s released this coming spring.

I was given a copy of The girl in the walls by AJ Gnuse by the publisher in exchange for a honest review. The book is about a young girl, Elise, who lives in the walls of a house. As she moves through the house the boys who live there begin to notice her. This was a very unusual story and found it lost its way half way through but enjoyed reading this novel.

I’m sorry to say that I did not finish this book! I did try but this one just didn’t hold me I’m afraid. I got to 30% on my Kindle and nothing had happened! Things did begin to stir but by 37% I’d had enough. Well written and descriptive but I couldn’t quite believe that a girl under the age of 12 (though I never did find out how old she actually was) could take care of herself for so long without being undetected! I definitely needed more action!

I don’t want to dwell too much on the negatives in regards to this review. So I will try and be as succinct as possible. I do think this was a promising premise but executed poorly. The plot was clunky and had some holes in pivotal plot points. I also think this book was drawn out to the point of ludicrousness. There was a chapter called The End and then another four chapters after. While the chapters are a few pages long, I was eye rolling and puffing with impatience by the end. I just wanted to finish it by 60% in. But I loved the idea of a Girl in the Walls. It was so creative to experiment/run with the idea of the noises a large old house makes and create a narrative from that.

I just didn’t understand the point of this novel. The author wrote themselves into corners with where they took the plot. But I loved the character of Eddie, he was super endearing. And the girl, Elise intrigued me but she became a one dimensional character as she spends the whole novel in the walls.

Overall I think this book would have been much more compelling, had it been significantly condensed. But the writing was really enjoyable and the author wrote wonderfully about the house. It really brought the setting of the novel to life.

Thanks to 4th Estate and William Collins, the author, A.J Gnuse and Netgalley for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

What a wonderful discovery! ‘Girl in the Walls’ is an entirely engrossing story of an orphan who, seeking comfort and some sort of reassurance, takes herself back to her old family house, now occupied by the Mason family, to hide in the attic, the laundry chute, and between the walls of this ‘balloon frame house’ on America’s Gulf Coast. The author’s choice of her name - Elise – reinforces the point that to those around her she is an elision, a ghost child, a faint susurration in the eaves, a whisper in the walls.
Whilst this novel has been promoted as a Gothic tale, complete with inexplicable shadows, a crazy villain and extraordinary natural phenomena, it is also a very sensitive, nuanced exploration of family life, what it means to belong and, conversely, how it feels to be achingly lonely. Over the course of the novel, the Mason brothers learn to appreciate what it is to have unconditional love, whilst their parents are reminded of this too: ‘How long until your baby is no longer a baby? Never, they realized, in case some part of them had forgotten.’ A J Gnuse also connects the established tales of Norse mythology that Elise enjoys with her own predicament, giving the novel an other-worldly layer whilst also placing the story firmly in the day-to-day life of breakfast cereals, DIY, homework, dust balls and sibling fights.
This is a really memorable, very moving story with moments of genuine terror contrasting with feelings of real tenderness, and a perfect ending. Such an impressive literary debut. I loved it and will be recommending it far and wide.
My thanks to NetGalley and 4th Estate for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

I'm blown away! This off the beaten track literary thriller is definitely one of a kind.

Imagine someone residing in your house, you can't see them, but you feel something eerie going on.
Well, that's the Girl in the Walls. The reader gets to know the main character, how she got here and why. Meanwhile there's a family living their life in this Louisiana mansion.
Although large in seize, going around its confined spaces most of the time gives a feeling of entrapment and eminent danger.

It took me a while to get into the story, but once it had me it wouldn't let go and I read all through the night to finish it.
The ending is heartfelt and brings this highly believable read to a very satisfying conclusion.

Thank you Netgalley and Fourth Estate for the ARC.

Girl in the Walls has a brilliant unique concept, but sadly its execution is a little overblown. At its best, it offers a modern twist on the gothic novel, tense and atmospheric. But most of the time, the focus isn't in quite the right place. The characters are a little flat, and we never really unlock the grief and denial which should sit at the heart of this story.

For a novel that seemed overlong, I feel like very little was actually said - Girl in the Walls is sadly almost as hollow as the walls the girl inhabits.

When Elise's parents die, she suddenly find herself all alone in the world. Transported by officers to a foster home far away from all she knows and loves, but closer to some family members, she barely knows, she decides to take matters into her own hands and flee.
Lost and alone she heads for the only place that ever felt like home, somewhere that holds the most memories of those she loved most. The home she grew up in.
But a new family lives there now, the ones who brought it after he family sold it, for somewhere smaller. But Elise doesn't care, she has to be their and she knows it better than anyone else, all it's hidden spaces, secret nooks and the gaps between the walls.

Girl in the walls is an enthralling tale, heart breaking, yet charming. The characters are well developed and interesting and Elise's character is explored so deeply, her emotions, her thoughts and it's wonderful.

The only thing I didn't like with this book is that it would suddenly ramble of topic, into a lot of description intended to set the scene and help you place yourself there, and at times that was great, at others I found it just rambled a bit too much and I would become distracted and start to lose the flow and my absorption in the book and grow bored.

That said, it is just a minor irritant and the story itself is lovely and definitely worth a read. There are lots of tense moments, that keep you locked to your seat, desperately needing to know what's going to happen next.

And you really feel for Elise and the boys of the house too. A lovely book and something a bit different, which is always nice.

Again thank you to NetGalley, A.J. Gnuse and the publisher for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I've really enjoyed it and think I might need to grab myself a physical copy for my bookshelves.

Surprising in its pace but still super engaging. Short, staccato chapters really add to the understanding of both Elise and Eddie's emotional compasses. Very nice.

I was very confused by this book. I'm not sure whether it was deliberate by the author, but it was initially unclear whether the 'girl' of the title really existed, or whether she was some supernatural presence in a house. It gradually became clear that she was a real girl, who was living within the walls of the house where she had spent the happiest part of her childhood before her parents were killed in a car crash.
Many questions were raised - how did she get into the walls? how did she survive in there? how on earth did she manage to evade discovery by the family who lived in the house?
Then there was the bizarre episode with the 'hunter'...
I'm sorry, but this book just did not work for me