Read a synopsis here!
Number of pages: 170
This was a really short and really harrowing book. I was deeply moved by it from beginning to end. The entire story takes on a sort of somber tone that is not lifted until the very end, and even then it is still daunted by darkness.
In Living Dead Girl, a girl, we don't know her real name for the majority of the novella, is kidnapped by a man named Ray when she is 10 years old. She was on a field trip with her classmates when she wandered away and he said he would "show her back to her classmates". Eventually, they leave the aquarium where the field trip is occurring and he takes her back to his house. He starts to call her Alice and requires that she stays his "little girl" forever.
Two days after her kidnapping she attempts to run away, but Ray finds her and tells her that if she ever tries that again he will go to her house where her family lives and kill them. Throughout the story we see flashbacks of when "Alice" was first kidnapped and how she dealt with her kidnapper and the circumstances and it really puts into perspective what people go through when they are kidnapped and why they simply don't just run away. We are shown the fear that Alice feels from her kidnapper and all the things she learned to do to obey him and at all costs not make him angry. Ray also has rules for Alice that she must follow like not talking to police, staying silent, and most of all remaining a little girl forever.
However, it is impossible to not grow older and a couple of days before her 15th birthday Ray realizes that she is not as little as she once was and he begins to abuse her even more. He is angry with the fact that she is growing up and he tells her that it is her duty to find a new little girl for him. Alice is sent to the park so that she can find the next "Alice" for him and there is an entire slew of events that follows after she finds this girl.
I would say it's a tale of survival, but at the same time it's not. It's not the perfect story of being able to overcome a situation, but the ending is satisfactory to my standards. This was really eye-opening and kind of scary. It seems like one of those books that parents and adults would not want their kids reading because it's SO true and parents want to protect their kids at all costs. However, I would say that this could be used as a learning tool between parents and kids to show that kids should never talk to strangers and should stay together as a group. Really good book, and definitely pretty dark. I'm going to need a light read after this to brighten my reading mood because this got me pretty down.
Really short book though and I flew through it in about an hour!
See you soon!
Paige
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