So I’ll admit it took me a few chapters to get into this. It did confuse me at first swapping between past and present, but I soon picked it up and it flowed so easily then.

The book is dark, there’s subjects such as religious cults, child abuse etc but I found it so interesting and the storyline was sooo hard hitting. The twist towards the end, absolutely got me. And I actually cried my eyes out haha. I felt sooo sorry for Lex, the damage and hurt she felt. As always, I don’t like to give spoilers, but it really does show the affect of shock and grief.

It’s so sad to thing that things like this does actually happen in real life, and Abigail did amazing at portraying it into a book. I really didn’t like Ethan throughout, I know there all victims, but I really didn’t like him.

It was a brilliant read, it had me shocked and in tears. I definitely think this is going to be a best seller 🤩

A grim but compelling story of one mans descent into madness and the horrific consequences for his family. How do you cope when you're released? How do you make peace with the good bits? How do you let yourself be happy? Why was each child treated differently in the aftermath almost like a lottery?' I'm not sure I completely understood / aged with the treatment of all the characters but I couldn't keep reading it. Thought provoking.

Very well done book that had me hooked from the start. I love stories that tell their parts in flashback form and from the view of a case being in the media of that specific world the author has created. This was a fantastic read and I couldn't put it down.

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.

Brilliant book and a debut novel as well! The story is about Girl A, Lexie, and her family, and their descent into the grimmest life imaginable. Current day, and their mother dies in prison and Girl A, has to go and collect her possessions. She then decides to contact all her siblings, and discuss what they can do with the family home. The story alternates between now and what happened in the past when they were young children, and you slowly realise the horrors that they endured, at the mercy of their father and mother. It's really well written and I think, is based in part, on a family in California , who were also subjected to a similar regime. What is interesting in the book, is to read about each child as they were then, and now as adults , and how they've moved on, since their ordeal. Strongly recommended.

Six children are raised in a home where religious fervour gradually descends into madness, resulting in physical, emotional and psychological abuse. One, known as Girl A, manages to escape and raise the alarm and the story of the children is consumed in a media frenzy.

But what happens when the frenzy has finished?

Girl A explores the story with Lex Gracie, aka Girl A. Now a successful lawyer, she is drawn back to her family following the death of her mother. The book takes you through the lives of the children, seen through the eyes of Lex, and shows how each child has managed to cope with the trauma of their childhood.

In parts, the book is harrowing and heartbreaking and is an extreme look at how adverse childhood experiences can affect people for the rest of their lives. The author has taken a horrific subject and dealt with it with sensitivity, I did not feel that there were any gratuitous or unnecessary scenes added purely for shock.

It is not an easy read, due to the subject matter, but this is a book that will stay with me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper Collins UK for the opportunity to read an ARC.

This is a dark and harrowing book and I must admit it took a while for me to read mostly because of the subject matter - child abuse, although the switching perspectives occasionally left me cold.
In spite of this though, I am glad I persisted and it really is a haunting read. It is one of those books that is on every reading list at the moment, a new "Gone Girl" and I can understand why. If you are in the mood for dark and twisting, this is the book for you.

DNF at 40%

I struggled to connect with this book: it starts off well but the premise gets diluted as it splits between so many characters, and the writing is disjointed as it skips between 'then' and 'now' between one sentence and the next. For such an emotive topic, the book felt oddly cold to me, and I found it hard to get a hold of the story: too much switching between back story of the parents, childhood, escape, tangled relationships in the present... I just wanted more coherence to the whole thing.

This was a very different read to anything I have read for a long time- it was told in two different time lines. Present day - a relatively boring storyline of a woman handling her and her siblings inheritance left to them by their mother. And the past time line that reads like non-fiction- of the family dragged into abuse by their religious fanatic father. Being a true crime fan there was one storyline that held my interest much more than
the other. I still can't quite fathom if I enjoyed this read or not, although maybe enjoy isn't the right phrase considering the content, the overall storyline was interesting, the characters were complex and brilliantly
developed. This would be a brilliant read for True crime fans.

Girl A by Abigail Dean is a heart wrenching contemporary tale that will upset and disturb because it feels as if it could be true. Abigail Dean has written it so well that we could be hearing about a true life case. The reader’s emotional response is directed by Abigail Dean’s powerful narrative.
The story is told through the eyes of Girl A. We ‘experience’ her emotions and responses. She and her siblings were subjected to some very twisted behaviour from their parents who ‘found’ religion and did not interpret it correctly. What started out as protection from the world soon morphed into cruelty and neglect. Girl A shares her thoughts, fears and feelings with the reader.
Girl A is a truly heart breaking read. Children should be nourished and loved with care. The novel is extremely difficult to read as the situation is painful in the extreme.
Abigail Dean has written the whole novel with compassion and care for the children. Girl A and Girl C in particular filled my heart and soul.
Girl A is powerful and painful.
I received this book for free. A favourable review was not required and all views expressed are my own.

Yup, it’s as good as the hype. Finally, a book that deserves to stand alongside the rightly successful Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. Abigail Dean has cleverly drawn a book that is embedded in trauma but does not resort to cheap “trauma porn” to make its point. Rather, we have a book that reflect on survival strategies and the extraordinary inner resolve we can have – even as kids.

But all of this is wrapped up on a fascinating fictional account of the surviving children of a traumatic “House of Horrors” where six siblings were kept imprisoned by their parents – fanatical Christians who subjected their children to awful suffering. A hugely impressive achievement.

Lex is a survivor. Imprisoned, abused and starved along with her siblings by a fanatically religious father and compliant mother, she has built herself a life in New York, far from the horrors of her childhood.

The death of her mother (in prison) brings Lex back to the scene of painful memories and causes her to revisit her relationships with her siblings, some of whom have embraced their gruesome celebrity status for financial benefit.

As the story progresses, Lex casts her mind back to memories of life with her birth parents, her eventual escape and her feelings towards her family, perpetrators and victims. Her meetings with her siblings reveal that each has a different experience of their ordeals which they have dealt with in many different ways.

This is a bruising and engaging story, about families and relationships, attitudes to poverty, how people cope with and survive childhood trauma, and about how religion can be used to perverted effect.

The story has echoes of real-life events but is never sensationalised. The treatment is respectful and at times insightful. The writing is superb and beautifully paced and Lex is an empathetic yet flawed central character.

One of the must-reads of 2021.

If you are in the mood for a intense and dark story to help you forget your lockdown blues then look no further than the magnificent debut novel Girl A from Abigail Dean.

Treading a fine line between thriller and intense character led drama you will find it hard to put this book down. Lex Gracie is Girl A, survivor. Her and her six siblings are survivors from what the media called the ‘House of Horrors’. What they were subjected to in that house by their parents will live with them for the rest of their lives. When their mother dies Lexie begins a journey that will reopen old wounds in her quest for redemption. The book follows what happened in this house. How it changed their lives and the dark secrets people keep hidden to survive. It’s powerful stuff and heartbreaking in places with a couple of brilliant twists.

It’s also a brilliantly paced and beautifully written debut, each of the six siblings and their complexities are examined, switching from their time in the house to the present day and what it cost each of them to survive. It’s not a true thriller as I mentioned but more a survivors story, which are often scarier than fiction and the book does a perfect job of this. You could imagine opening a newspaper and reading this story. Must read book of 2021

A powerful, gut punch debut of a book ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out of five

This book was a breath of fresh air after months of struggling to get back into reading. I was hooked from the first page and enchanted by Abigail Dean's use of prose. While it did take me a few chapters to grow used to the style of writing, with the narration slipping easily between the past and the present day, I found that it actually grew on me. It worked really well for a book that packs this much of a punch and leaves you wanting to pass it onto the next reader. I finished the last chapter at just past midnight and had to lay there for ages afterwards, simply in order to process what I had just read.

It's a relatively simple premise, really. Nothing that I haven't heard before, based on books like Room, as well the unfortunate real life examples, like that of the Fritzl case in Austria. Most glaringly, as an avid true crime reader and listener, I made the connection between the fictional Gracie case in this book and the real-life horror of the Turpin Case in the United States.

Lex (the protagonist) is better known as Girl A in the media. She was made famous when she escaped the House of Horrors created by her parents. Five more children are pulled from the filthy and detritus-filled house. The book switches between the present day, where Lex is trying to contact her surviving siblings after the death of her mother in prison. We are offered insight into the way trauma manifests itself, the lasting damage it wreaks on people, as well as family relations. It's a very difficult read at times, and definitely doesn't gloss over anything. But I also appreciated that it wasn't grotesque or overly graphic in depictions of violence and assault.

I definitely recommend this book to those who like a slowly unfolding mystery. It's not a story I will be forgetting easily.

First of all a warning that the book is about child abuse by their parents. Not a comfortable read.

Lex (Girl A) is the eldest of 7 children. Over the years her father has become more and more obsessed with the bible and his aim to completely control his family. The children are taken out of school and locked in their house, windows boarded up and they are given little food. Children are beaten if they misbehave.

Lex and her sister Evie, who share a bedroom, discuss plans for Lex to escape and get help. The night eventually comes when she breaks the window, jumps out through the broken glass and reaches a road to get help.

We are taken back and forth between the story of how the children came to be prisoners in their own home and the ‘now’ where the children are now adults; some have recovered from their ordeal, having been too young to remember, and gone on to leave fairly normal lives but some have never got over what they went through and struggle with their adult lives.

Their mother dies in prison and leaves Lex as executor of her will, leaving Lex to decide what to do with the old house. She needs to get permission from all of her siblings and so begins the mission of tracking them all down.


I struggled a bit to keep up with the back and forth between timelines as it is not always obvious, although this may be changed in the final book. I did not feel any connection to any of the characters.

It was a good debut but it was very dark and not an easy read for me although many other readers have enjoyed it.

Thank you to Harper Collins for an advance copy for review.

Another 5 star debut for 2021 - thank you Abigail Dean for my third 5 star read of the year and this utterly incredible novel that I devoured in less than 24 hours (in between work, dog walks and sleep).

This was a quick read for me; I felt this was fast-paced, both the current circumstances along with the childhood flashbacks, with new information divulged at every turn. Even so, the character development was exceptional, especially given the size of the Gracie family alongside the subplot characters. Each sibling was given an individual personality, history and outlook; all so very authentic yet flawed, disagreeable yet endearing. I didn't go into this thinking it was solely a psychological thriller or mystery, though there were certainly a few twists and turns which I enjoyed. No, I feel this is more of a literary fiction and drama category. It is ultimately a portrayal of the intricacies of abuse and neglect (child and domestic) and a close character exploration of the ambiguities surrounding relationships between siblings, parents and children, husband and wife.

This is reeeeally readable from the get go: It flows very well from past to present as well as from sibling to sibling; telling the stories of all the Gracie children's lives, their childhoods and their lives after the escape, chapter by chapter. Truly it was nice not to feel jolted by the story-telling because the subject matter was enough given it explores in some depth child abuse and neglect as well as mental health problems, grief and loss, substance use and exploitation. Dean very masterfully managed to depict the 'House of Horrors' - essentially extreme child abuse and neglect - without going too graphic; make no mistake this is a harrowing and difficult read, vivid enough to stay with me, but it never left me feeling it went too far.

Girl A was gripping and powerful; very easily a 5 star read for me. I will eagerly await what Dean does next.

*I received an advance review copy of Girl A from the publisher via NetGalley.

Such a dark, harrowing read. Girl A kept me glued to the pages until the early hours. Fantastic read. 5 stars.

The levels of cruelty from members of the human race towards one another never fails to sicken me.
Made for an uneasy read in parts but decent story well told
Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the ARC.

My thanks to HarperCollins Fiction U.K. for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Girl A’ by Abigail Dean in exchange for an honest review.

There’s been a great deal of prepublication buzz about this novel and after reading its sampler l was excited about it, immediately preordering its audiobook edition, 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.

This book did really pull me in. Some of the chapters had me a little confused as to who's point of view I was reading but all in all it was very good. Parts were heartbreaking but the resilience shone through. I would've liked to have had more of the story of Ethan, and maybe a happily ever faster for Lex.