Girl in the Walls - A.J. Gnuse

 

Girl in the Walls is a story about a girl named Elise who loses her parents in a car accident; unable to deal with the loss of her parents Elise leaves her extended family and returns to her family home, which she grew up in. The catch? There is another family already living in the house so Elise must adapt and occupies the wall space to avoid the family, only coming out when the family is away or at night when the family is sleeping. Elise is aware of all the creaky floorboards that may expose her position in the house, but a series of mistakes leaves Eddie, the youngest son of the family in Elise’s family home, unsettlingly aware that someone is watching him. As more things begin to go missing or things are misplaced with no explanation Eddie confides in his older brother about the girl in the walls and thus begins their attempts to expose the intruder living in their house.

 

When I began reading A.J. Gnuse’s Girl in the Walls it filled me with such anxiety of Elise getting caught despite her intimate knowledge of the house. I’ve always read horror stories online of houses in America where someone was living in the wall space and the occupants had no idea, so Elise’s character had me on edge. However, I didn’t enjoy the ending too much as I feel it could have ended earlier than it did. The hurricane part felt as though it dragged the narrative out so that it could give Elise the chance to leave the house without being discovered, although Traust’s character is terrifying in his deranged state to prove that Elise exists. Overall, Girl in the Walls shows the desperation of people. Whether that be the desperation brought by grief and how the grief is handled or the desperation of being right about your sense of paranoia. Girl in the Walls exposes the extent that people will go to in order to feel safe.