Cloud girls A novel

This heart-wrenching novel follows two girls' journeys into sex trafficking. At 13, Nico is at the top of her class in her village in Moldova. She loves climbing trees and swimming with her best friend. When she gets her first period, her father tells her it's time for her to get married and sells her to a man who, he assures her, will let her continue her education in England. As soon as she gets in the man's car, though, it's clear that the better life her father promised her was a lie. Meanwhile, the adult figures in fifteen-year-old Sammy's life don't believe her about her alcoholic mother's abuse. She can no longer stand any of it and runs away from her Dublin home. After a predatory older boyfriend grooms her for sex work, she tries to make money on her own. Inspired by firsthand accounts Irish novelist Harding (Bright Burning Things, 2021) encountered through her work with the Stop Sex Trafficking of Children and Young People campaign, this is a haunting look at exploitation.

Irish author Harding (Bright Burning Things) delivers an issue-driven story of child sex trafficking in this flat outing. Two girls, both of whom were caught up in the same trafficking scheme, narrate in alternating chapters. Sammy, 15, runs away from her suburban Dublin family to escape her abusive alcoholic mother. Brash and rebellious, Sammy "chooses" sex work, or at least she thinks she does, in part as a misguided get-rich-quick scheme. Nico, meanwhile, is a bookish 12-year-old from rural Moldova whose father tells her she's to wed an older man who will take her to London, who then hands her father a large amount of cash. Soon Nico's in a van with similarly vulnerable girls heading to Italy, where they are drugged and exploited. Eventually, Sammy and Nico end up sharing a room in Ireland, where the girls watch soap operas during the day before being taken by their traffickers to meet clients at night. Harding is a capable prose stylist and clearly feels for the characters, but she invests more energy in spotlighting a pressing social problem than on crafting a narrative. This lacks the power of the author's other work. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Assoc. (Apr.)