Published in 2021
352 pages
12 hours and 47 minutes
Abigail Dean was born in Manchester and grew up in the Peak District. She was formerly a Waterstones bookseller and a lawyer for Google. Her first novel, Girl A, was a New York Times and Sunday Times top ten bestseller and a Kindle number 1 bestseller. Abigail’s latest novel is The Death of Us, a love story interrupted by one terrible night of violence. It has been acclaimed by Stephen King, Cecelia Ahern, and Mick Herron.
Abigail lives in London with her husband, children, and cantankerous cat. She has always loved reading, writing, and talking about books. You can follow her on Instagram @AbigailSDean.
What is this book about?
She thought she had escaped her past. But there are some things you can’t outrun.
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, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It’s been easy enough to avoid her parents – her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But 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 home into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings – and with the childhood they shared.
What begins as a propulsive tale of escape and survival becomes a gripping psychological family story about the shifting alliances and betrayals of sibling relationships – about the secrets our siblings keep, from themselves and each other. Who have each of these siblings become? How do their memories defy or galvanize Lex’s own? As Lex pins each sibling down to agree to her family’s final act, she discovers how potent the spell of their shared family mythology is, and who among them remains in its thrall and who has truly broken free.
For listeners of Room and Sharp Objects, an absorbing and psychologically immersive novel about a young girl who escapes captivity – but not the secrets that shadow the rest of her life.
