Girl A

By: Abigail Dean

Narrated by: Holliday Grainger

Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's Summary

THE INSTANT NUMBER TWO SUNDAY TIMES BEST SELLER

Narrated by Holliday Grainger, star of Strike and The Capture

The book that will define a decade. 

‘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. 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 six siblings - and with the childhood they shared.

Beautifully written and incredibly powerful, Girl A is a story of redemption, of horror and of love.

Rights sold in 27 territories. 

Soon to be a TV show directed by Johan Renck (Chernobyl) 

One of Marie Claire, Waterstones and Grazia’s best books for 2021 

©2020 Abigail Dean (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic Reviews

"Gripping, beautifully written perfection." (Sophie Hannah)

"An astonishing achievement." (Jessie Burton) 

"A masterpiece." (Louise O’Neill)

Characters are so well developed

Great story and great narration - really clever inclusion of all characters! The flashbacks are really excellently portrayed

Horrifying, beautiful, haunting and uplifting.

Girl A is Lex, a survivor from a house of horrors where she and her six siblings (girls a,b and c and boys a,b,c and d) have been tortured, abused, starved and mistreated by her stark raving father and peculiarly detached mother.
The story starts years after the Gracie children are away from the house when their mother’s death forces them to revisit the past.

The story is heartbreaking, and horrifying in turns, although it rarely goes into details or is explicit.
It does a great job of picking up what happens after the cameras stop, the newspaper headlines end, and the circus dies down.
I don’t want to give any spoilers, but the characters are rarely exactly as they first appear but still feel very true.
Ms Hollidays performance was great.
9/10

Heartbreakingly brilliant

Wow.... what a powerful book. It was read beautifully and broke my heart many times but just so beautifully written, there is no way I could stop listening to it. nothing I can say wrong about this book just brilliant, brilliant, brilliant

Beware any book described as "literary"

If I had known before I lost the hours it took to endure this pile of self regarding ordure, I would have driven a screwdriver through my ear drums. Yet another callow indulgence penned by some dreary young woman who thinks its insightful and "LITERARY" to be dull. It isn't.
Spoiler alert: A family is ruined by a religious nut and Child A, a troubled young survivor describes pretty much everything you might expect. No surprises. No insights. Dull, dull, dull. And certainly not a thriller, literary or otherwise. Avoid.

Kept me listening

I enjoyed this listen, I think a lot of that was down to the narrator who I thought was great (as she is on Strike series). Details are revealed slowly and some aspects are left for you to draw your own conclusions, which makes it both intriguing and a little frustrating. Would still recommend it though.

Terrible, a real struggle to listen to it all!

The main character was not as all likeable. She was very difficult to engage with. The story rambled and was a real struggle to listen to. The narration sounded very condescending and the narration of the male characters was very irritating.

Amazing

Brilliant book, I finished it in two days. I hope she writes another one soon.

Dazzling

A sensational debut novel. Worthy of all the buzz and more. Read beautifully here. Highly recommended.

Uninteresting

I have listened to over 5 hours of this book and apart from the beginning nothing is happening to want me to continue listening.
There's no mystery etc; just boring waffle to fill a gap between the beginning and the end of the story. I really don't understand (actually really amazed) how some people have rated this book so highly. I will continue listening and if the story improves I will change my review.

Badly written and badly read

Takes details from prominent media stories and turns them into fictional misery lit. The characters are badly drawn and it's hard to see why the situation would take place. Some details, like the matching shirts, are shoehorned into the story without good reason for their occurrence. The stories Lex tells about her parents attempt to include information that couldn't realistically have been described by them or remembered by her. I wanted to get to the end just to see what else it included but I really struggled.

What an achievement

Such a beautifully written debut novel. As the story slowly unfolds you find yourself gripped by the tragic, then optimistic, then tragic reality. I’m eagerly awaiting Abigail Deans next publication.