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3.5 AVERAGE
3.5 AVERAGE
Incredibly mind numbing with not particularly engaging nor likeable characters
Not your standard murder mystery. I enjoyed the concept, but the book definitely dragged at many points.
3.5 stars rounded up. This is a hard book to read. It’s sad, but I couldn’t stop reading it. Here’s why:
Lex Gracie is Girl A. She’s the one who escaped. Lex has 4 brothers, Boy A through Boy D. She has two sisters, Girls B and C.
Lex has lived through a nightmare. Her childhood home became known as the House of Horrors. However, while the reader knows there is abuse, the full extent is not really graphically detailed. Much like the children trapped in their rooms only hearing the abuse around them, the reader is also left to their imaginings on what is really happening most times.
The book is broken into 7 very long chapters. Each child, except one, gets a chapter starting with Boy A, Ethan.
I followed pretty much until the chapter went from Girl B to Boy D. This is when I dug in. I did look ahead and Girl Cs chapter comes after Boy D and right before the last chapter when they are together again. It drove me nuts not knowing where Boy C was!! I am a very linear thinking person and this just through me for a loop! I literally checked each chapter to make sure I didn’t miss Boy C. He does show up but intermingled in Boy Ds chapter as if they are interchangeable. It was very odd to me and if I were to DNF the book, I would have done it at this point because the chapter made the least sense to me of all of them!
And, the timelines within the chapters change almost by paragraph! Also as a reader, there’s a sense of unreliability, untrustworthiness from the beginning; however, I think that is to convey the story through the lens of Lex who doesn’t really understand or remember accurately everything she endured.
But Lex’s story is heartbreaking. It’s the story of how children who endure abuse carry it with them at all times. And each child endured and remembered their lives differently, yet each was scarred.
Overall, I don’t feel right saying I liked this book because it’s full of awful abuse. But I could not stop reading this book and hoping for an ending that you know from the beginning doesn’t happen. The writing , to me, was very good. Again, it’s not traditional-the timelines are all over, the stories are intermingled, and there are a lot of questions at the end, but I felt for Lex, and if I didn’t love her, I feel like I understood Lex at the end.
Lex Gracie is Girl A. She’s the one who escaped. Lex has 4 brothers, Boy A through Boy D. She has two sisters, Girls B and C.
Lex has lived through a nightmare. Her childhood home became known as the House of Horrors. However, while the reader knows there is abuse, the full extent is not really graphically detailed. Much like the children trapped in their rooms only hearing the abuse around them, the reader is also left to their imaginings on what is really happening most times.
The book is broken into 7 very long chapters. Each child, except one, gets a chapter starting with Boy A, Ethan.
I followed pretty much until the chapter went from Girl B to Boy D. This is when I dug in. I did look ahead and Girl Cs chapter comes after Boy D and right before the last chapter when they are together again. It drove me nuts not knowing where Boy C was!! I am a very linear thinking person and this just through me for a loop! I literally checked each chapter to make sure I didn’t miss Boy C. He does show up but intermingled in Boy Ds chapter as if they are interchangeable. It was very odd to me and if I were to DNF the book, I would have done it at this point because the chapter made the least sense to me of all of them!
And, the timelines within the chapters change almost by paragraph! Also as a reader, there’s a sense of unreliability, untrustworthiness from the beginning; however, I think that is to convey the story through the lens of Lex who doesn’t really understand or remember accurately everything she endured.
But Lex’s story is heartbreaking. It’s the story of how children who endure abuse carry it with them at all times. And each child endured and remembered their lives differently, yet each was scarred.
Overall, I don’t feel right saying I liked this book because it’s full of awful abuse. But I could not stop reading this book and hoping for an ending that you know from the beginning doesn’t happen. The writing , to me, was very good. Again, it’s not traditional-the timelines are all over, the stories are intermingled, and there are a lot of questions at the end, but I felt for Lex, and if I didn’t love her, I feel like I understood Lex at the end.
I think this was a “stolen from the headlines” novel. I seem to recall a large family where all the kids were severely abused.
It was interesting but not really what I wanted. This book mostly explored the after effects of this type of trauma, and I was looking more for a plot-driven “how did they get away” story.
It was interesting but not really what I wanted. This book mostly explored the after effects of this type of trauma, and I was looking more for a plot-driven “how did they get away” story.
pretty good - a little exploitative of people's real stories though.
Good, not great...
Definitely a heart breaking read that fully examines trauma in an understanding and graceful way. However, I found the writing a bit choppy and didn’t find the flashback scenes to be seamless. I had to flip around sometimes to understand which time period I was in and what I was reading. Overall, I did enjoy it for what it was but could have been slightly better.
Book #30 of 2021
Definitely a heart breaking read that fully examines trauma in an understanding and graceful way. However, I found the writing a bit choppy and didn’t find the flashback scenes to be seamless. I had to flip around sometimes to understand which time period I was in and what I was reading. Overall, I did enjoy it for what it was but could have been slightly better.
Book #30 of 2021
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
A difficult to read story about childhood abuse, trauma, and the lingering effects into adulthood. Girl A is a fictional take, but there are elements similar to real life crimes and tragedies.
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug use, Mental illness, Torture, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail
slow-paced