Naked

Trombley, Stacy. Naked. 2015. 345p. ISBN 978-1633750074. Available at FIC TRO on the library shelves.

Anna Rodriguez ran away to New York City from her suburban life at thirteen. She quickly fell in love with Luis. Their relationship evolved until she became Exquisite, a teen prostitute and he became her pimp. Three years later a personal tragedy leads to her arrest.

Sarah, her social worker, helps her return home. Nothing has changed in her relationship with her overbearing father and his dominated trophy wife, however. Anna’s integration at the local high school is even more difficult as she is quickly recognized as that girl from the missing posters still visible around town. Speculations abound as to where she was and what she did. Fortunately there’s Jackson, a normal teen boy who likes her for whom she is, and not for the sex she can offer. Lurking in the shadows, however, is someone who knows she was Exquisite and who could reveal her past to the entire school.

Trombley does an excellent job portraying the devastating impacts prostitution has on participating teens through Anna’s first hand account. Anna’s fears and loss of normalcy makes her reintegration back to school and to her family is portrayed realistically, as are the reactions of those around her as they spread rumors and react to her reappearance. Fans of hard hitting fiction and personal tragedy such as Kiss of Broken Glass will clamor for this title, but the explicit language, the vivid descriptions and the subject topic make it more appropriate for older students.