Living Dead Girl or Reading at the local Barnes & Noble

Often at Barnes and Noble I will fill up a basket of books and then over a caramel frappachino I will browse my selections, mostly reading the first chapter to make sure I like the style it's written in, and then deciding if it needs to go home with me.  There are some books that cry to come home from their very first sentences (like Fly By Night by Francis Hardbinge) and others are immediately re-shelfable.  And then there are the books that demand to be read right then and there.

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott turned out to be the read right now book.  It's not a long novel, made even shorter by the amount of white space in the book as it's told in short chapters.  The story centers around a young girl who had her life and her identity stolen from her by the man who kidnapped her when she was just ten years old.  Now she goes by the name Alice, and much like a ghost, no one sees her- no one but her tormentor.  She has reached the age of 15, the same age the first "Alice" was killed by the man that holds her captive.  In a desperate attempt to keep her forever young he keeps her weight under 100 pds and she does her best to minimize her tall frame.

Although he hasn't killed her yet, Alice craves the freedom her death would grant her.  He has kept her close to him, with threats to her family, threats he carried out with the first Alice's family. As his ultimate plans for her began to take a new unspeakable shape, Alice is caught up in an emotional turmoil that she has managed to suppress for so many years.

According to Amazon.com, Elizabeth Scott has written several romances for young adults, Living Dead Girl is not remotely related to a love story for teens.  It is the tragic story of what happens to little girls who disappear.  The writing is loose, and the time frame jumps around, but the voice of Alice is raw and real.  I honestly could not put the book down.  Thank God for the comfy chairs at Barnes & Noble!  And the caramel frappachinos, the vanilla bean cremes, and the peppermint hot chocolates don't hurt.

I read Living Dead Girl several days ago, killing some time waiting for my husband to get off work.  I did the same thing this past Monday- Hubs had to work a few hours before we could leave on our trip to the Outer Banks.  I got half way through Identical by Ellen Hopkins (I've been meaning to read something by her as I see Crank on the banned/challenged lists).  I should be back at B&N tomorrow night to finish and give a review of it.  Right now I'm gonna take my sleepy, blurry eyed bum to bed.