Review: Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

Once upon a time, I was a little girl who disappeared.

Once upon a time, my name was not Alice.
Once upon a time, I didn’t know how lucky I was.

When Alice was ten, Ray took her away from her family, her friends her life. She learned to give up all power, to endure all pain. She waited for the nightmare to be over.
Now Alice is fifteen and Ray still has her, but he speaks more and more of her death. He does not know it is what she longs for. She does not know he has something more terrifying than death in mind for her.
This is Alice’s story. It is one you have never heard, and one you will never, ever forget.

I read this around three weeks ago and have only just got round to the review, as I've had to order my thoughts a little!

I've seen lots of reviews for this around the blogosphere, and even though most of them have been really good reviews, I have been putting off reading it due to the content. I was worried that this book would be too graphic, or that I wouldn't feel comfortable reading it.

I think that I was right to be unsure. This book is written so beautifully which hooked me straight away, but as I had thought the content was a bit extreme for me and I feel like the issue could have been dealt with a little more lightly. I'm a pretty accepting person and I'm not the type to get uncomfortable easily but I don't know why but this book did. I think one reason may be the way that Ray rapes Alice every second paragraph, it got a bit old and I felt that this took some of the beauty away from the book.

But then again, this book is written to be hard hitting and produce extreme reactions from the readers, so I can't really say that is a problem with the book itself, mainly just a personal issue. I think my other issue was that I couldn't relate to the characters, i couldn't relate to Alice because I've never been in her situation, I didn't like Jake because he seemed a bit of a jerk to be honest and I couldn't relate to/I didn't like Ray because I'm not a pedophile. SO that may be one of the reasons I didn't really like this book.

When I say I didn't like it, I mean that I was enthralled, I was addicted, I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see how it ended, but as soon as it finished it I took it back to the library and told myself to never think of it again.

Overall, a haunting but beautiful book with some fantastic writing. I struggled to relate to the characters and I disliked the execution of the content, though in the end I have to admit that it got the response from me that it wanted and I can't really knock it.

Rating: B-

Stand alone/series: Stand alone

UK Release: September 8th 2009

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Book obtained via: Borrowed from library


Many thanks to Sarah at Orchard for sorting out this copy for me!