This is published by Young Picador, and I suppose intended for a young adult readership. Julia Bell has taken the subject of sex traffic, and approached it head-on, through the eyes of a young Russian girl, Oksana/Natasha, and Hope, the young English girl she meets. Oksana is on her way into England to be sold to someone as a prostitute, but there's a horrific scenario; her seller has 'lost' the girl who was supposed to be accompanying Oksana and needs a replacement. He moans that he will get more for a pair, and his buyer will be angry. So Oksana meets Hope on a ferry, trying to escape from her world weary and disinterested (rich) daddy. She doesn't do what you expect, and the same can be said for the book throughout. It's a clever idea, to have the English girl co-narrate; it allows us access to a world so strange and alien that without the voice of Hope, we might not really understand it.

It's not a book for the faint-hearted; although there are no salacious details, the unimaginable horror and grimness of the girls' lives are clearly detailed, and worst of all, there is no attempt to pretend that this is a happy-ever-after story. Most of the characters you fleetingly meet with not escape their fate, and Bell does not flinch from the bleakness of the overall story. But the character isn't called Hope without reason; you'll have to read it yourself to find out why. I devoured this in one go- it's comelling, taut and honestly told, but there's a spareness and a warmth about it that lifts it above a documentary version of a story that's becoming all too familiar from tabloid reports.