Girl A by Abigail Dean
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Girl A by Abigail Dean

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Girl A

Debut

by Abigail Dean

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Quick take

This haunting exploration of trauma and survival is a gripping portrait of family, violence, and memory.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Psychological

    Psychological

  • Illustrated icon, Nonlinear_Timeline

    Nonlinear timeline

  • Illustrated icon, Sad

    Sad

  • Illustrated icon, Unsettling

    Unsettling

Synopsis

"'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, 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.

Content warning

This book contains scenes that depict child abuse, domestic violence, PTSD, and suicide.

Read a sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Girl A.

Girl A

1.

Lex (Girl A)

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.

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Thriller
View all
Famous Last Words
The Boyfriend
Count My Lies
First Lie Wins
King of Ashes
The Man Made of Smoke
A Talent for Murder
Beautiful Ugly
One Perfect Couple
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Retreat
Kill for Me, Kill for You
Bad Tourists
Murder Road
Daughter of Mine
The Fury
The Soulmate
The Only One Left
Dark Corners
Blacktop Wasteland
All the Dangerous Things
The Broken Girls
We Were Never Here
The Golden Couple
The Stranger Upstairs
Gone Tonight
Too Good to Be True
You Are Not Alone
Rock Paper Scissors
Not a Happy Family
A Flicker in the Dark
Reckless Girls
The House Across the Lake
The Maidens
You're Invited
The Last Party
Sharp Objects
None of This Is True
The Silent Patient
The Family Upstairs
Girl A
The Hunting Wives
Just Another Missing Person
First Born
Breathless
You Belong Here
Forget Me Not
59 Minutes
Where He Left Me
Anatomy of an Alibi
The First Time I Saw Him
My Husband’s Wife
It’s Not Her
The Exes
Her Last Breath
Nothing Tastes as Good