Author: Abigail Dean
Publisher: HarperCollins
Genre: Thriller
First Publication: 2021
Language: English
Major Characters: Lex and her siblings
Theme: Family, Memory and Past, Fear, Violence
Narrator: First person limited, from Lex's point of view
Girl A is a story of Lex’s survival through horrible experiences with her minacious parents.
The novel is more about the aftermath of trauma than the events triggering it.
The story starts off with the news of Lex’s mother's dying in prison. The narrator, Lex wants to turn horrible memories of the “house of horrors” into a local community center for good.
Lex and her siblings stayed with their parents. The family seems rather normal till the point Lex’s father loses his job and becomes overly religious. Their lives take a terrible turn turning into a “House of Horrors”.
One day, Lex, or “the girl who escaped” succeeds in escaping from her miserable life. But did she manage to escape from her past? May she did manage, or at least she pretended, until the day her mother died in prison. This event led her to finally break off from her past and move on.
Although this is a thriller novel, I perceive it as a story of dealing with a horrible past and moving on in life. Lex faced a lot, almost gave up, and ran off the truth about Evie. But what matters most is she decided to start anew.