Review: Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

Living Dead Girl Elizabeth Scott
Published: September 8th 2009
Publisher: Simon Pulse

Goodreads Summary

The thing is, you can get used to anything. You think you can't, you want to die, but you don't. You won't. You just are. This is Alice. She was taken by Ray five years ago. She thought she knew how her story would end. She was wrong.

Is it possible to write a poetic book about kidnapping and imprisonment of a child? I 

guess the answer here is yes. This is a really hauntingly, disturbingly beautiful short 

novel which features a horrific crime. 

“I have been smashed and put back together so many times nothing works right. 

Nothing is where it should be, heavy thumping in my shoulder where my heart now 

beats.”

15 year old “Alice” was lured into Ray’s car when she was ten, taken from a field trip into 

Shady Pines where she was conditioned to become another person. The horrific physical 

and emotional abuse was flowing through the book without having to be spelt out and 

shouted at the reader. Although the pain that is endured by the character isn’t explicit 

It’s still a hard story to read. The fact that there have been and are children that are 

being put through this right now is horrifying and this book shows you a slight insight. 

To say that Elizabeth Scott managed to capture the horror of the characters capture in a 

rather beautiful way is an understatement. I didn’t think that a story could leave scars, 

but this book certainly has. I haven’t stopped thinking about it for weeks. 

“She became a story, one I have mostly forgotten. One I can't end because she died a 

long time ago.”

Scott manages to draw you in with her unique writing, the fact that the chapters start 

with “Once Upon a Time” when reciting what happened to “Alice” when she was 

younger is unforgettable, it plays on the fact that it’s telling a atrocious thing that 

happened to a young girl while starting it off with a popular fairy tale opening. 

I wasn’t expecting this book to cover all the basics, the characters back stories were 

detailed in the small amount of words that this book required. For a second I felt sorry 

for the monster and for what Ray was doing, knowing his loveless upbringing and the 

abuse that he received from his mother was enough for me to know why he became the 

monster he is, it was enough for me to sympathise with him. I didn’t even think that I 

would have been able to image the horror and the experience of someone that was so 

much abused. I didn’t think it was possible for an author to even describe such a thing in 

a book; I felt as if I was right there with Alice throughout her torture, throughout the 

control he had over her. I felt trapped in this character and felt as if I was living her 

story. 


This was labelled as a young adult novel, I know so many bloggers have already 

mentioned the fact that it shouldn’t have but I disagree. This is exactly what mature 

teenagers need to read. Everyone should read this. I am now carrying this story around 

with me everywhere I go.