Dirty Work

Reviewed by The Compulsive Reader for TeensReadToo.com

Hope never thinks anything interesting will happen in her life. She seems to be on the fast track to nowhere, and her parents despair of ever understanding her.

She is jolted out of her quiet and idyllic life when she encounters Oksana, a Russian girl who has been sold as a sex slave. Hope's tentative friendship with Oksana leads to her own kidnapping by the owner Oksana is running from. These girls have only each other, and they will have to overcome their bitterness and prejudice and work together to escape from their captors.

But will it be too late?

DIRTY WORK is a riveting and captivating read. The pages go by quickly, and Ms. Bell keenly builds suspense throughout the entire book show more by interspersing flashbacks of Oksana's past in between telling the two girls' predicament. Without being inappropriate or too mature for teens, DIRTY WORK easily conveys the horrors of human trafficking and how very easy it is to get caught up in it.

This terrifying, entrancing novel will certainly grab your attention, and won't let go until long after the book is finished. show less

Riveting tale of English girl's entanglement with Russian slave trade prostitute. 15-year-old Hope and Oksana (aka Natasha) respectively, tell their stories in alternating chapters. The girls who at first seem so different share many common traits, including aspirations to 'get away.' Hope's kidnapping is esp. gripping.

An issues driven book that I felt didn't have strong enough characters to make it more than that. The Russian character was really filled out as the book went on but I felt the English girl was just a stereotypical self involved/I-pod/boys/mobile teenager as seen by an adult!

This is basically a less impressive toned-down version of Patricia McCormick's Sold. The main girl in this story never does get raped even though she is sold to be a prostitute.... and they feed her and they never beat her.... so really it wasn't bad for her. The other girl, Oksana, has been in the situation for a long time and so she gets raped in the story, but you don't really hear about it and you certainly don't "see" it. The front cover quotes Kevin Brooks as saying the book is "As real as it gets." Umm... no. It's completely unrealistic and there are way too many coincidences and bits of good luck. I wasn't too impressed.

a very sad (but unfortunately) true story (in many parts of the world),even though the ending a "happy" one, it left me with little closure.