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.

Oh My Goodness. I think there are only a few books in this world that can make me feel shocked, scared and so moved.

This book is definitely one of them.

The blurb and the comments really reeled me into the story. I really love this praise by Lisa McMann. I totally agree with it!

"A haunting story of an abducted girl you'll be desperate and helpless to save; her captor so disturbing, so menacing, you'll want to claw the pages from this book and shred them. Brava to Elizabeth Scott for creating such an intense, real, and perfectly painful story of terror, not without hope. Living Dead Girl is impossible to ignore." 

-- Lisa McMann, New York Times bestselling author of Wake

I finished this book in less than an hour, and it left me feeling breathless. Short chapters, but it's so emotionally and mentally effecting that you'll be thinking about it for days. "Alice's" story is a horrifying one and with every chapter you'll feel like screaming or crying for her, wishing her out of her pain and misery. 

I found this book really different from the other two books I've read by Elizabeth Scott, The Unwritten Rule and Stealing Heaven. It's amazing how different, yet AMAZINGLY good this book is!

This book reminded me quite a lot of Wake by Lisa McMann, mainly because it was the same writing style, with short chapters, but ones that effect you the most. Books that you can read under or around an hour, yet they stick with you for days and days, keeping you awake at nights, clawing and wishing desperately that this never happens to you.

Ray is horrible. I feel so sad for Alice as she has to endure the torture he puts upon her each day since she was ten. It's all gasp-and-scream worthy when Ray's in the chapter. Horrible character, but amazingly crafted (imagined by Elizabeth Scott – not like, he's gifted or anything). He's definitely one of the most creepiest and horrible of the bad guys in books I've read. *Shudder*

*SPOILER ALERT* Yet, as Lisa McMann says, there is hope for Alice at the end. With those chapters, as she talks to the Policewoman, to that guy, and to other people besides Ray, it seems more hopeful every time. The ending made me (nearly) cry with tears of joy. She, at last, is free. But I'm not gonna tell you how...

I love the cover! That's another thing I loved about this book. The cover is really attractive, in that haunting ghostly way. It's Fabulous!

Overall, Living Dead Girl is a haunting, yet sad, beautiful book about a girl, who wishes for freedom by death, and shows us that even in the darkest of times, there is always room for hope.