If you think your life is miserable, think again.
A heartbreaking and haunting book this one was. I was reading it at my campus's bookstore that particular morning, some time in March, after I had my mid-exam week finished. I admired the design of the front cover of the book when it stands on the shelf, the 'mystery' it gave me, and the mysterious title. Living Dead Girl. So then I took it off the shelf and find a most comfy spot near the big windows of the bookstore, and started reading. To tell you the truth, I was actually not ready for this kind of story when I read it (for 2 hours straight). But then again, I thought this book is one of the amazing books I've read, and so I'll share it with you.
The story is about a girl, 15 when the novel started, remembering her once perfect life shattered by an encounter with a stranger when she was 10. The stranger, a man, kidnapped her (as what he was intended to do in the first place), and treated her as his 'property'. For 5 years her parents searched for her until they think she was killed and search no more. The story takes flight from there, a little bit blurry and full of questions in the beginning, and as the novel advances, it became clearer... About the kidnapper, the poor innocent little girl turned teen, and her dark fate. The writer, Elizabeth Scott, really knows how to capture the tragedy happened to once innocent girl, elaborate it to a moving and heart wrenching story. As the novel advances, so are our knowledge of what was going on -and questions of what will the heroine of the novel a.k.a the girl, will do to escape her dark fate- those tremor and broken feelings will switch to a hate and disgust toward the kidnapper.
The book is first published in 2008, and has won many awards since then. Elizabeth Scott wrote the novel in a first person point of view. She clearly finished the novel in that manner of a haunting effect, shown in the ending of the novel which pretty much wrapped up in an abrupt and, unfortunately cut on the climax of the story. I don't feel the ending is right for this novel, after all the build-up of feelings, the abrupt completion does not give the conclusion, solution, nor fulfillment to me as a reader. It is like the novel toyed with my feelings, giving me some kind of whiplash, and then WHAM! Smashed me onto the ground, with no other explanations. (In fact I kept reading the last few lines to finally grasp of what was going on, and kept peeking the next page, as though a word or two might actually appear on the blank white paper, giving some kind of conclusion, explanation, or anything, but no, it doesn't).
Yet I admired Scott's effort in making the image of the girl and the kidnapper so vividly real inside my head, haunting, kept me silent and lost in thought afterwards. I thought this is a great novel to be read, not to be read as a light reading on your usual spare time though. This book will rip your heart until the very end, yet it was told in an amazing way you can imagine.
