An account of girl A’s experience of growing up in an abusive family unit, the transition from ‘this must be normal’ to ‘we need to escape’. The book moves back and forth as recollections and unraveling of memories long buried away are brought out.
Fictional of course, but could this happen in our street, what are the signs, what could you do?
Quite a few blanks and I assume the reader has to imagine, you may reread a few parts to check understanding. The descriptions of child neglect are very real and found myself moved to tears.
The story develops into how the family found their own ways to deal with what happened to them. The damage may never be repaired but life moves on.
Thank you to NetGalley for the advance copy.

This felt like a great true crime read with a character study incorporated.
This book is both gruesome in places and the tension is fantastic and both these aspects I really enjoyed
I did find I was waiting for a big twist that didn't happen but that may have just been my expectation.
A good and quick thriller and great on audio

This was a good read, and was very dark in some places, trigger warnings for child abuse.

It isn't my favourite read by this author, i'm not sure what it was that stopped me from loving this book, it is a very slow paced book, so maybe it was that, but I could't seem to really get "into" it.

I would definitely recommend it to my friends though,it just wasn't for me this time.

For anybody wanting to master creative writing, look no further. This here is the Holy Grail, faultless in its execution and possibly the most well-written book I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Everything I learnt in three years of Creative Writing seminars, Abigail Dean packages seamlessly into one phenomenal debut, exemplar of what the very best fiction should look like.

Psychological crime has been the beating heart of award-winning literature for years but, rather than lead the reader down the usual winding path of real-time discovery, Dean instead holds up to the light the aftermath of years of trauma, abuse and suffering.

The gaggle of siblings stand to attention, white-blonde hair and antiquated clothing, their eyes silently pleading through the faded photograph. The photograph isn’t particularly chilling in itself, but its subjects grabbed the attention of British newspapers. The Gracie siblings.

Told through the eyes of eldest daughter Alexandra – Lex – ‘Girl A’ unpackages boxes of emotional suffering that have long been sealed shut, year-by-year as she recounts the morning of her escape from the House of Horrors and the following years of recovery and reclaiming her life.

As their birth mother wastes away in prison, finally dying unremarkably under the state, Lex is somewhat surprised to find out that she remains the named exchequer of the Gracie will. With an inheritance to split and a House of Horrors to deal with, Lex must unite with her estranged siblings to put their fractured past behind them once and for all.

‘Girl A’ sees Lex reunite with her siblings, firstly her elder brother Noah (Boy A), then Delilah (Girl B), and so on. Whilst the future appears bright and with plans to convert the House of Horrors into a community centre, not all of the Gracie siblings are so forthcoming, and all struggle with their own plights of psychological trauma.

Notoriety, vulnerability and unwavering courage culminate to bring a cast of nuanced characters all with their own distinct voices and agendas.

A harrowing portrait of the repercussions of childhood suffering.

Do not approach this book if you’re wanting a grisly crime story, you won’t find that here. Instead, ‘Girl A’ deals with the emotional journey of a girl reconnecting with her broken family and juggling conflicting sibling dynamics. A fantastic debut nonetheless rich with realistic characters, written with natural flair.

When siblings must fight against one another to survive, can they ever revert to one happy family?

Stick with this one. It’ll certainly be worth it for the warped slow reveals, the evocative imagery and the emotional impact.

I was fortunate enough to receive exclusive audio access to ‘Girl A’, narrated by Holliday Grainger. Cast by Fionnuala Barrett, audio editorial director at Harper Collins, Grainger perfectly complements the character of Lex, sensitively whispering through the dark years of abuse and suffering, as if speaking of it too loudly will transport the siblings back in time, whilst celebrating her small successes in recovery flushed with pride. At times, the narrative felt ethereal and subdued, a well-matched pairing for the eldest Gracie daughter.

Other reviewers have commented on the narrative jumping as distracting, but I didn’t find this to be a problem with the audio retelling at all.

An unflinching and highly engaging raw look at what it means to be a survivor of abuse. I won’t be forgetting ‘Girl A’ anytime soon.

Huge kudos to Abigail Dean, her team at Harper Collins and everybody involved in the production of both the book and the audiobook. An incredible piece of fiction from a truly excellent debut author.

Also a warm thank you to the teams at Harper Collins Audio and NetGalley for gifting me an ARC audio of this book. This honest review has been given at the request of the publisher but all of the opinions given are my own.

A debut novel that’s very much hyped up.

I was really looking forward to this after reading rave reviews but I found it hard work.
It’s well written but I just didn’t like Lex which didn’t help and it was quite hard to follow.

A sad read, I can understand the hype but I can’t hype it I’m afraid.
Sorry

Girl A by Abigail Dean
Narrated by Holliday Grainger
I give this audiobook 4 stars

Lex Gracie doesn’t want to think about her family or 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.

I found this such a dark,powerful and haunting listen and Holliday Grainger had the perfect voice full of feeling.She narrates as Lex throughout telling her and her siblings recollections of surviving their tragic childhood trauma intertwined with their present day lives and how they’ve all coped during and after in different ways.It is incredibly well written and creates such deep,well developed characters that really make this a standout fantastic debut novel.
It will be the book everyone is talking about and stays with you! A completely intense and heart wrenching must read book of 2021.
Warning subject matter child neglect.
With thanks to Netgalley,Abigail Dean and Harper Collins Audio for my chance to read and review this audiobook book

This was probably one of my most anticipated books on my TBR list for 2021, I kept it to read close to publication date as I wanted it to be a 2021 top read and it has not let me down. Seeing it marketed as a book for fans of Room and My Dark Vanessa, I had huge expectations.

The story unfolds through flashbacks and retellings of the lived experiences of the children who were held in the Gracie House of Horrors. The reader gets to see elements of all the children's experiences and how some of them vary greatly. I adored how well we got to see into their lives with tiny details building the atmosphere and totally enveloping you into their devastatingly harsh world. The world-building was so well done that at times you felt you were reading about an archaic story rather than a modern family being help captive in sheer depravity.

I also found the characters were so well created and suited to the storyline. At times it's quite difficult to warm to the main character Lex as she is so closed off and almost wooden, but after those experiences, what else would be expected?

Sometimes books of this genre end quite abruptly at the point that the survivors escape and the reader is left bereft and lost wondering how their lives will pan out and out will their lives be effected, Girl A gives the reader full insight into just how well people can adapt and equally just how horrid people can become.
Another aspect other similar books tend to miss at times is how the captor gets to that point of behaving in such a horrid manner and I loved that we saw Lex's fathers slow demise played out.

I had started this in book format and then got approved for the audiobook version so ended up switching between the two. The narrator was perfect and really added to the flow of the story and helped build the characters in my head.

This wasn't the easiest book to read with very strong and prominent triggers of child abuse and neglect but 100% is already on the cards to be one of my top reads of 2021.

Girl A - Abigail Dean
Narrated by Holliday Grainger

Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about her family. She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents--her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings - and with the childhood they shared.

What begins as a propulsive tale of escape and survival becomes a gripping psychological family story about the shifting alliances and betrayals of sibling relationships--about the secrets our siblings keep, from themselves and each other. Who have each of these siblings become? How do their memories defy or galvanize Lex's own? As Lex pins each sibling down to agree to her family's final act, she discovers how potent the spell of their shared family mythology is, and who among them remains in its thrall and who has truly broken free.

Girl A is an intense psychological thriller about Lex and her siblings. This book follows Lex as she tries to get her siblings to agree on what to do with the ‘House of Horrors’ after she is named executor of her mother’s will. It flips between past and present; detailing what happened to the children whilst in the house, during their recovery and now in adulthood.

This is such a gripping read that had me hooked from the first chapter. Whilst the story is heartbreaking in places, it is just so beautifully written with excellent character development.

I would highly recommend this story of resilience and survival of the siblings. I am looking forward to seeing how the TV series portrays the family.

Rating 5/5

I requested this book because I had read many great reviews about this debut novel, and it did not disappoint.

Absolutely gripping, beautifully written and wonderfully narrated. A psychological thriller perfect for anyone who loved The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl. You won't be able to put it down!

This is one of those powerful books that will stay with you. It's jumps from the past and the present. Although it's a book about abuse it tells of the time before things got really bad. It focuses a lot on after Lex escaped and got help. The damage it had all caused to the individual child. It is told mainly from Lex's point of view. She needs to sort the house out after their mothers death. She vists each of the siblings and we find out how they each lived their lives afterwards. It's very powerful reading and quite emotional but you need to keep reading. I couldn't put it down.

I listened to the book via audiobook. The author really brought the story to life and I was totally engrossed in it.

My thanks to HarperCollins U.K. Audio for a review copy via NetGalley of the unabridged audiobook edition of ‘Girl A’ by Abigail Dean. It narrated by Holliday Grainger.

Alexandra (Lex) Gracie has distanced herself from her identity as ‘Girl A’: the girl who escaped from her parents’ House of Horrors where she and her six siblings were imprisoned.

Lex is now a lawyer based in New York. When her mother dies in prison Lex returns to the U.K.. She finds that she has been named executor of her mother’s estate and that she and her siblings have been left the family home as well as some money.

Together with her sister, Evie, Lex wants to turn the former House of Horrors into a force for good. Yet to move forward with these plans she must come to terms with her six siblings and with the traumas of their shared childhood.

Lex is the narrator of the novel and there are flashbacks to past events that fills in details of the collective past of the family.

It was clearly inspired by a number of true crime cases, especially the Turpin family of California, whose parents, like the fictional Gracie family, had starved and shackled their children. Their situation came to light in 2018 when one daughter escaped and raised the alarm.

I had assumed before reading that ‘Girl A’ was going to be a thriller but found it to be a literary novel that sensitively addressed the long term effects of childhood trauma. I felt that it was well written and a compelling read.

While it is intense and dark there is much more than sensation to the narrative. I have read other novels about surviving troubled childhoods that seem more like fictional misery memoirs. However, I felt that Abigail Dean was more restrained focusing on the bonds of love, hope, and humanity rather than overly dwelling on explicit details of the abuses.

Certainly an important novel that I feel will be of interest to reading groups for its themes and possibilities for discussion.

With respect to the audiobook edition, I find that novels with a first person narrator work especially well as audiobooks. Holliday Grainger is a well known British stage and screen actor and as a result her confirmation as narrator for ‘Girl A’ made headlines in various publications.

I have followed Holliday Grainger’s career for years and felt that she was an excellent choice to narrate Lex’s moving story. She was a joy to listen to.

I gave this to 52% before I couldn't take listening to it any more.
This was so dull. At first I was intrigued, wanted to know what had happened during their childhood and what the parents had done, but as the story droned on and on <i> and on and on</i> I quickly lost interest. I didn't form a connection with any of the characters and found that the narrator even seemed bored while reading it.

I don't really understand why the chapters had to be so excruciatingly long and I couldn't keep up with the constant timeline switches. It wasn't obvious when listening to the audiobook when the narrator had switched to the past or back to the present, so I was constantly thrown into confusion.

Massively disappointed considering all the praise and hype this book has been getting recently.

There has been so much excitement around Girl A by Abigail Dean, and I knew I had to bump it right to the top of my to be read pile, I was gripped from the offset and I finished it in a few days!

We firstly meet Lexie, named 'Girl A' by the press following her escape from her childhood home or 'house of horrors', when she was young. Now a lawyer living in New York, she has to come back to the UK following her mother's death, who has died in prison and has left the house they grew up in, to her and her siblings in her will. And now Lexie has to face her traumatic past once again.

It’s been reviewed in places as ‘dark and disturbing’ and yes, there are some parts that are very difficult to read and imagine, but the horror & abuse the characters suffered as children is implied rather than graphically detailed which is just as impactful, if not more, so don't let this put you off this incredible novel.

Something that stood out to me is that every single character is written beautifully and described starting with Girl A who does come across as quite cold, with the narrative switching back between their childhoods spent in the ‘house of horrors’ to the present day, but it doesn't get confusing. The book really focuses on the after effects of trauma - how does each sibling move on from what they experienced? Girl A is far more than a whodunnit as it focuses on the survivors of a terrible crime and how they cope, or fail to, with their freedom. It’s how they’ve all found their own ways to deal with what happened to them. And Lex finding the courage to confront their horrific past and learn the true power of forgiveness and moving on.

4/5 stars for me, will definitely read anything else from this author - great things to come!

*Review also available on Amazon*

I received a copy of Girl A by Abigail Dean from Netgalley in audio format. I had expected to enjoy the story, albeit in the knowledge that it was about children escaping from an abusive family situation. I was unprepared for the awful sadness and brutality described.

I’m wondering if I found it so unpleasant and painful because I was listening to the narration and this somehow made it more real. However, I failed to finish it and couldn’t recommend it.

I must say that the narrator, Holiday Granger was very easy to listen to and I’d definitely like to try an audio book read by her again. Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins for an opportunity to listen to this story..

Girl A is one of the most talked about novels of January 2021 and I was really looking forward to listening to the audiobook, having very much enjoyed a sampler previously. Very well narrated by the modulated, calm tones of Holly Grainger, Girl A is the story of Alexandra Gracie, told by her of living in the ‘House of Horrors’ with her six siblings and their mother and father.

As the book opens, we are in the present day. Lexie’s mother has just died in prison and Lexie is the executor of her will and the one who has to decide what to do with the house and the small legacy of £20,000 that is left. Now living in New York, she has to stay in England to negotiate the will with each of her brothers and sisters.

The narrative switches time frames quite often without signalling so it can be quite interesting at times to keep up with whether we are in the past or present. Girl A is rather beautifully and evocatively written and has none of the exploitative horror that you might have expected. The matter of fact-ness of the narrative is one of the things that makes the book chilling.

Yet, you can’t help be a little disassociated from Lexie. She’s a character whose life has been very difficult, but who you never warm to – perhaps because she has never had a good relationship herself. That has its drawbacks, however, as you never really emotionally engage with Lexie and though her upbringing was indeed pretty horrible and abusive, that experience never quite sears its way into your consciousness in the way you might expect.

Girl A is a detailed exploration of trauma and the after effects; it is an in depth character study of how Lexie has handled her upbringing and how she copes with what she has experienced.

Through Lexie’s narration we understand the various characters, her siblings and their parents and everything we understand is from her perspective. We also get a fascinating perspective on the role of the media in such cases and it isn’t pretty.

There are moments when the silence in this narration prevails and that really makes a point in a way that words would not and Dean’s writing style is quietly tough and sometimes devastating.

Verdict: Well-written, nicely plotted and not sensationalised, this is an interesting story with some compelling moments and a plot moment that was easily anticipated, but was nonetheless impactful. In the end, I think I expected something stronger and more emotionally engaging, but maybe that says more about me than the story? Still very much worth a listen/read, even if not wholly for me.

There is so much hype right now about Girl A and I was really hoping to be approved for it to get stuck in. It’s a very well written book and Holliday Grainger does a superb job narrating it. It’s a harrowing storyline for sure but it doesn’t stand out from other books of a similar nature therefore I really don’t get the hype around this book. I did like how each Gracie sibling got there own chapter to explain past and present. I found the storyline just going through the motions and not much going on so not sure why it’s being described as a thriller as for me there was no suspense. The switching from past to present without warning was somewhat confusing. I was left with some unanswered questions which I think are important to the storyline and actually kept me listening but I didn’t get my explanation. I really wanted to love this but it just wasn’t the case unfortunately and it fell a little short for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins UK Audio for the opportunity to listen and review this ARC that was published on the 21st of Jan.

Girl A is heart wrenching, heart stopping and a read that makes you believe in hope despite the darkest of circumstances. It's a stunning debut by Abigail Dean. Holiday Grainger is the perfect voice for this audiobook she tells the story of Lex and her siblings so well, has you utterly gripped from the first word she utters. She manages to tap in to your emotions and at times send shivers down your spine.
This is an audiobook you will not forget listening to and one you will likely tell all your friends to listen to.

DNF @ 36%. I'm just not following it at all, it doesn't make sense to me and the time jumps seem to happen constantly and with no pause or anything, it's unnerving.

When Lex Gracie's mother dies in prison after making her the executor of her will, she must approach each of her siblings to get their permission to turn their old house (branded the House of Horrors by the press) into a community center.

I loved that each chapter focused on a different Gracie sibling, detailing how they coped with their childhood trauma and how it has led them all down very different paths. While it deals with tough subject matter, it was such a compelling read that I read in one sitting.

I alternated between reading and listening to this and I can recommend both options. Holliday Grainger was a great choice of narrator.

This is sure to be one of the biggest debut novels of 2021 and it deserves to be a massive success.

Thank you to Harper Collins and #NetGalley for an advanced copy.

Girl A by Abigail Dean was featured in National Book Tokens/Caboodle's '21 books to look out for in 2021'.