Girl A by Abigail Dean is about a young woman named Lex, who, along with a few siblings, survived a traumatic childhood. Lex, or Alexandria, was the one who escaped and got help for her siblings.
Lex is the main character in this novel, and the reader doesn't really learn much about her siblings or their life as children. I see that a lot of people liked this book, but I really don't understand why. Each chapter is about a different sibling, and each is chapter is interspersed with past, present, and future information. This makes it really hard to read and follow as we never know what timeline we are reading, and it really hurts the reader who is trying to get to know the characters. I don't mind books that skip through chapters and changes through characters, but none of the information was reliable, and so the reader never got enough information to really care for any of the characters.
The other big problem I had with this book was that it took a really long time to get to the trauma of the children. I didn't even feel that it was fully explored. We keep being told that the children went through unimaginable horrors, but the details weren't really delved into until we learned what we already knew - the conditions the children were found in when Lex escaped and got help. The father is described as an evil man, but we aren't really given reasons or answers as to why or how. The reader finds scenes where there is obvious cruelty but nothing is delved into further.
I almost gave up and stopped reading this book. I didn't care for the characters, nor did I care for the range of the novel. The novel took too long to get to the point, and the "twist" was obvious from the very beginning. Nothing was developed as far as if could have been because there was too much jumping around in the chapters between the timelines. I never really got to how one child was killed (I don't think it was delved into) or how the other children felt about it. There was so much that could have made this a better book than it was, and I really do hate giving bad reviews, but so many people are seeing this book and wanting to read it, when there are so many other great books out there.
I know you will make up your own mind whether you read this or not, but I had to add my "two cents" to the conversation.
Lex is the main character in this novel, and the reader doesn't really learn much about her siblings or their life as children. I see that a lot of people liked this book, but I really don't understand why. Each chapter is about a different sibling, and each is chapter is interspersed with past, present, and future information. This makes it really hard to read and follow as we never know what timeline we are reading, and it really hurts the reader who is trying to get to know the characters. I don't mind books that skip through chapters and changes through characters, but none of the information was reliable, and so the reader never got enough information to really care for any of the characters.
The other big problem I had with this book was that it took a really long time to get to the trauma of the children. I didn't even feel that it was fully explored. We keep being told that the children went through unimaginable horrors, but the details weren't really delved into until we learned what we already knew - the conditions the children were found in when Lex escaped and got help. The father is described as an evil man, but we aren't really given reasons or answers as to why or how. The reader finds scenes where there is obvious cruelty but nothing is delved into further.
I almost gave up and stopped reading this book. I didn't care for the characters, nor did I care for the range of the novel. The novel took too long to get to the point, and the "twist" was obvious from the very beginning. Nothing was developed as far as if could have been because there was too much jumping around in the chapters between the timelines. I never really got to how one child was killed (I don't think it was delved into) or how the other children felt about it. There was so much that could have made this a better book than it was, and I really do hate giving bad reviews, but so many people are seeing this book and wanting to read it, when there are so many other great books out there.
I know you will make up your own mind whether you read this or not, but I had to add my "two cents" to the conversation.
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