Review: The Girl Who Lived

The Girl Who Lived by Christopher Greyson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think I need my “inner-rater” recalibrated. Many of the works I’m reading seem so majorly flawed, and yet the majority of readers appear to find them enjoyable and perfectly worthy of all the stars. The Girl Who Lived follows in that vein—an average mystery with a ridiculous ending and more four and five star ratings that has left me shaking my head.

The plot is unique—to that I will concede. Faith is a twenty-two year old woman who has spent the past ten years in and out of mental hospitals after surviving a vicious attack that killed her best friend, her best friend’s mother, her own father and sister. Though local authorities have closed the case, convinced her father killed them all and then himself, Faith remembers another man—a man with the face of a rat—whom she believes committed all of the murders and then chased her into the woods. Now that she is finally out of the hospital (again) and in her own apartment, trying to tamp her rage and alcohol addiction, Rat Face is back—and he is stalking her. Is it Faith’s own fear manifesting as paranoia, or is the past finally catching up? That is the question that propels the rest of this book.

So not only is the plot reasonably unique, the writing is also solid. The tone in each scene is well-developed, the dialogue is believable and Faith’s character is intriguing and complex. So why three stars? It’s difficult without spoilers, but suffice it to say that for me, the end is cheap and cliche and feels like a betrayal of the trust between author and reader.

This would have been a four star read had I not had such a visceral reaction to the conclusion. As it stands, however, three stars feels generous.



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