ARC Review: Naked by Stacey Trombley

Title: Naked
Author: Stacey Trombley 
Genre: Contemporary 
Source: NetGalley
Publisher: Entangled: Teen
Publication Date: July 7th 2015
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Summary:

The best place to hide is in a lie… I could never fit in to the life my parents demanded. By the time I was thirteen, it was too much. I ran away to New York City…and found a nightmare that lasted three years. A nightmare that began and ended with a pimp named Luis. Now I am Dirty Anna. Broken, like everything inside me has gone bad. Except that for the first time, I have a chance to start over. Not just with my parents but at school. Still, the rumors follow me everywhere. Down the hall. In classes. And the only hope I can see is in the wide, brightly lit smile of Jackson, the boy next door. So I lie to him. I lie to protect him from my past. I lie so that I don’t have to be The Girl Who Went Bad. The only problem is that someone in my school knows about New York. Someone knows who I really am. And it’s just a matter of time before the real Anna is exposed…

Review

Naked isn't an easy read. Not in the sense that it is hard to read, it is thought provoking and raw. Anna's story is one of many, I think it is easily forgotten that in large cities there are young girls who are sold for the pleasure of other men. Naked is both beautiful, and an eye opening debut novel.

First off, that cover. It is beautiful. I love how Naked follows the lines of the girl's body, it is a beautiful representation of this novel and Anna. Naked starts off with Anna in a police station, talking to a Social Worker. We learn pretty quickly that Anna ran away from her strict home when she was thirteen to peruse her dreams in New York City. But her nativity got the best of her. Alone in a huge city Anna finds herself in the care of an older man named Luis, who soon begins to sell her out to his friends and soon strangers. But Luis sold her, and in trying to get back to him Anna is picked up by the police and set up with Sarah. Quickly it is learned that Anna is being looked for and Sarah manages to bring her back to the very same home she was trying to escape three years earlier. At home Anna starts over, she goes to school, gains her parents trust, and tries to keep her secret about her life in New York City a secret, only someone is intent on using it against her. 

I loved Anna's character, she starts off in the lowest point of her life. Through out the few weeks/months that this book takes place you are able to see Anna flourish into who she is really going to be. Anna felt real, the parts where she talked about how her life in New York made her feel, and what she thought about herself genuinely broke my heart. She comes home and has to be "normal" with no one to talk tool about the things that had happened to her. My favorite Anna is at the end of the book, sure she was still an "outcast" and people had negative things to say about her still but she just let it roll off her shoulders. She was a fighter, and learned that other people harbored horrible secrets too. She wasn't alone. I loved the development of her and Jackson's friendship and then relationship, it was paced nicely and Anna didn't rush head first into it. 

I've never been as angry and sick about a character as I did about Anna's father. He was just a horrible man. He didn't see that his actions already pushed his daughter away, but when she returns he is going to tighten the leash, treat her like trash and not listen to what the social worker advises him to do? In the first half of the book Anna is still fragile and could bolt at any second, but he father is still enforcing all the horrible rules and expectations on her. Anna wasn't even home for a half hour and he was already pushing her to join choir. Her father got his way through intimidation of both physical and emotional abuse of both Anna and his wife. 

Overall I really enjoyed Naked, I do highly recommend it. I'm content on how Stacey left Anna's story on a positive note. Stacey will be an author I will be looking out for in the future! 

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