Review: Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

Rating (Out of 5): ~3-3.5 (maybe 4)

Publisher: Simon & Schuster (Simon Pulse)

Spoilers: No.

Goodreads Synopsis:

"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.

Review:

This book… This book is just wow. I’m not even sure what to say about this book, honestly.

I’d been intrigued by it for a while, and had read some of Scott’s other books, but just hadn’t gotten around to it. I got the opportunity, though, and finished it rather quickly, seeing as it’s a very short book. And it kind of surprised me.

I do find these types of books interesting, but they aren’t my normal genre, and so I don’t get around to them as much. And when I started it, I wasn’t too sure how far it was going to go, and it definitely went farther than I was expecting.

It didn’t blow my mind, or anything; I know these kinds of these happen, have read things about them, and know that they can turn out like this, I just wasn’t expecting a YA book to go that far, I guess. And I feel bad saying that, as I know YA books go farther than most people (people that don’t read the genre, at least) think, but still. It was darker than I expected. And because of how dark it was, I have a hard time deciding what to rate the book, and how exactly I feel, and what really to think about it. It’s just, there was so much. So much to take in, or something.

I felt bad for the girl, and then I didn’t feel so bad for her. I felt sad for her, I guess, because of her situation and how it turned her into what she was. I understood it, in a way. I wasn’t too surprised, even if I didn’t quite like it.

I didn’t like the guy, as I really shouldn’t have. I did like that he was given a bit of a back story, a little bit of a reason for why he turned out the way he did, why he likes what he does. I didn’t like it, but still.

I felt bad for… Well, I just felt bad. For the situation, for her, for what they were planning to do.

And the ending. I’m not sure what to think of the ending much at all. It fit, really well. I’m not sure that things could have turned out okay in any other way, but it was still sad. For her, not him. And, well, and the other two people involved, by a lot. (I’m not going to ruin that, though, because you’d have to read to really understand and get what happened, and I don’t want to spoil it, in any way, no matter how much I want to talk about it.)

I guess I liked this book; it definitely wasn’t bad, and I didn’t not enjoy it. It’s just the kind of book that gives you mixed feelings, that you have a hard time saying you enjoyed when the subject was so bad and depressing, and the ending was what it was.

One thing that I really did like about the book, was the writing. It was written in a really neat way, going to the past and then the present, skipping around all over the place, being stuck inside her head, with all of her depressed, statement-like thoughts. The whole thing, really, was done really well, and that did impress me.
So, yea, I did enjoy it. I might have to pick up some more of Scott's books, as well as some others with this type of subject, as there are some that I've been eying.