Girl A by Abigail Dean 2,5**

This is a book you either love or hate. I’m afraid I’m propending toward the latter at the moment.

First of all, let me point out that this book is listed as a literary thriller but is nothing of the sort! It’s a drama about dysfunctional and abusive parents and the psychological strain their children endure because of it!

I can’t even begin to tell you how many problems I had with this book! The first and biggest problem was the writing! I felt I was in the author’s head trying to interpret her jumbled thoughts. The sentences were clipped and scarce jumping from one subject to another.

Each paragraph started in a different timeline (there are only 5 or 6 chapters in the whole book, each of them referring to one of the abused siblings) so that I often found myself rereading whole sentences because I thought I was in the past instead of the present and vice versa!

Her writing was just all over the place!

Another thing that bothered me was that there was no climax or mid-point in the book, just the nightmarish retelling of what these children endured and how the past followed them into adulthood! There was one minor revelation near the end, but by then I had completely lost interest in all the characters.

I’m not saying it’s awful, someone else will probably find some hidden meaning and find her writing style innovative and fresh! The author certainly was brave to face such a heavy topic for her debut novel. But I need to enjoy a book, be it a heavy topic or not and that didn’t happen with this book!

All in all, a very depressing and discouraging tale that failed to convey some much deserving optimism for the future.

Not for me, I’m afraid!

2,5 stars!