Lex Gracie has a new life. It doesn't involve (most of) her siblings, her past, and it especially doesn't involve being executor of her mother's will. She's tried her hardest to leave it all behind, to become more than just Girl A, the child who successfully escaped and got help for her brothers and sisters. Leaving the past behind is harder than she bargained for, though, and forced to get her siblings' signatures in order to turn their former House of Horrors into something better, Lex has to come to terms with what she experienced growing up -- and try to understand her siblings in the process.
First and foremost, I enjoyed the slow unraveling of Lex's past, and I found her tentative reconciliations with her siblings to be both fascinating and also rather sweet. The rather disjointed writing style didn't bother me; for me, it was an example of Lex's own mental state, and her attempts at trying to "forget" or "move on" from her tragic past. The jumping timelines worked well, I thought, in helping us to further understand exactly how hard it is to keep ourselves from falling into memories of childhood traumas.
This book is not a "thriller," or a straightforward "mystery." We know the crime, we know its perpetrators, and we know the victims. This is instead about the aftermath and impact of severe abuse, and how even children who have grown up in the same circumstances and same environment cope with varied methods, and are different despite their shared upbringing. So, if you are picking this up expecting there to be a mystery, you will undoubtedly be disappointed.
However, there were a couple of elements I found both disappointing and lackluster. I'll start with something simple: Dean is an only child, and sometimes it shows. Some of the relationships are very well done nonetheless, but there were some passages that left me thinking, "No one thinks this way about their sibling," or "That doesn't seem realistic at all." The most important issue, though, has to do with something that is a huge spoiler, so I'm afraid I can't discuss it in detail. So, I'll just say: there's a predictable, disappointingly harmful "twist" that definitely knocked a star off for me.
Finally, while I would recommend this book, I think there's one more thing that needs to be addressed. While this book does include various details pulled from many famous true crime cases (including Rosemary and Fred West's "House of Horrors"), it is extremely obvious that the Turpin case is the main "inspiration." Many people questioned the ethics behind this, and speaking truthfully, I do as well. It is fiction, and there's obviously millions of other books that closely follow real life stories, but the Turpin children have already been so exploited, so violated -- not only by their parents, but by the media and outsiders -- that it does feel almost insulting. And I'd argue that it might go beyond mere inspiration, because it is down to the very smallest details (these are only a few examples: the Gracie father is a computer engineer, as was David Turpin; the Gracie children are allowed showers only once a year, and mustn't wash their hands above the wrist, just like the Turpin children).
If we're going to criticize Dean's book, though, then we must go on and criticize many others. It's a complicated, multilayered issue that I, unfortunately, don't have a good answer for. Victims and survivors should be protected from all forms of exploitation, but if we didn't allow books that were inspired by real life events, we'd probably have none at all. And what about authors of true crime books? Does that same rule then apply to them?
It's an issue that stumps me, and I hope that if any one has any thoughts on it, you'll leave a comment!
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