Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

Living Dead Girl is a story about a girl named "Alice" who was kidnapped at the age of 10 and forced to become the object of a pedophile. For the past 5 years, she has been his object and forced to be his "wife" while still looking like his daughter to the rest of the world. She is forced on a strict diet in order still look like a child. She wants to run, but after threats of killing her old family, she needs a plan. After years of abuse and threats, her capturer Ray decides that he wants a new little girl and that Alice will help to raise and "train" the new little girl. But when that plan starts to fade, she needs to find a way out before it turns fatal.

The book is written as a series of journal entries from the perspective of Alice. Her name wasn't always Alice. Alice was the name of the little girl before her. But she is the new Alice and it's all she remembers how to be. Glimpses of her old life come back and she assigns guilt and blame to "that little girl," separating her current self from herself as a child, basically treating them as two different people. She also spends hours a day watching TV. With nothing else to do, she escapes into a world of soap operas and talk shows. She has very little contact with the outside world and all encounters with those in it are awkward. She performs sexual acts on strangers to make them feel as though they are nothing and not important to her. She wants to make them feel as she feels about her whole existence. There are also several instances of physical and sexual abuse in the book. At times while reading, it is easy to get caught up in the story and also feel like she is trapped and will never escape. She fears that her only escape is death. At the end of the book, the reader is left wondering if Alice lives or dies. All she says is that she is free. Though the book is a tragic look at what happens to those in the hands of pedophiles, it also leaves the reader with a sense of hopelessness. Like that there is nothing that can be done to help this girl but to sit and read about all the terrible and horrific things that occur to her. The feelings that are invoked during the book include helplessness, fear, depression and the lack of hope. While this is book to help those who have dealt with this issue in the past, it's not really meant for younger readers.