Girl in the Walls

Girl in the Walls by @ajgnuse
Reviewed by Mimi
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Thank you to @livmarmar & @4thestatebooks for this early advanced review copy.

What is home?

When Elise loses both her parents in an accident she has that question asked at a very young age. She decides that home is the house she grew up in. She goes missing from the relatives looking after her and ends up living in the walls of her family house. She exists in an almost parallel way to the Mason family who have two teenage boys. It's all going very smoothly until the boys start to feel her presence. They hire someone to help flush the presence out and it all goes wrong.

This is a heartbreaking story about grief and belonging. As a child, Elise's sense of home was so intrinsically linked to where her parents were and that was the house where she lived with them. Geography was everything, not familial bonds or blood relations. She is a survivor, that is clear.

This novel was filled with tension and yet it was amazing to me that all that energy was focused on a single house and a limited collection of characters. It was a wonderful book but terribly sad at points. I think of you were to read it during lockdown it might make you feel a bit claustrophobic so be careful if you're feeling a bit delicate!