Living Dead Girl
A novel written by Elizabeth Scott. Surprisingly has nothing to do with zombies or ghosts, despite what the title may have you think.
The book is narrated by Alice, a 15-year-old girl who lives with a man named Ray, in a place called Shady Pines Apartments. The preceding statement might seem innocuous enough, without including such minor details as Ray's repeated sexual assault, starvation and beatings of Alice.
It turns out that Ray is not Alice's father, as it would seem to anyone looking in from the outside, but a pedophile who took her away from her family when she was only 10.
As the book progresses, Alice finds that Ray would like to have a family, another little girl for him to "love". It turns out that the task of finding this girl is up to Alice. Most of the book follows Alice's attempts to find a way to get Ray to focus on this new girl and get back home to her family.
- Adults Are Useless: Alice thinks this for most of the story.
- Broken Bird: Alice.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Jake.
- Complete Monster: Ray. Oh God, Ray.
- Downer Ending: Can be interpreted this way. Alice gets shot along with Ray, and it's implied she dies because of it.
- Everything's Better with Princesses: Ray thinks that all little girls should like princesses.
- First-Person Smartass: Alice has her moments.
- Freudian Excuse: Ray's mother did to him what he does to Alice.
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel: The entire book could qualify as this.
- No Name Given/Known Only By Their Nickname: Up until the last few pages, Alice is only known by the name Ray gave her (Alice), and it is not until the end that we learn that her real name is Kyla Davis.
- Plucky Girl: Lucy.
- The Woobie/Jerkass Woobie: Alice. You feel sorry for her, but then you see what she does to others in order to make herself feel stronger.
- Rather understandable considering her circumstances, though. Five years as an abused, underaged sex slave isn't very good for your moral compass.