Sold by Patricia McCormick

 

I'm doing this thing where I reread books I read as a teen. SOLD was one of those books. I remember reading it when I was an older teen and thinking it was so interesting and edgy, reading about the types of real world issues we didn't really learn about in school. Sex trafficking is a global epidemic, so it is good to see YA authors writing about it, but all of the criticisms people had for this book really held true for me: the vignette style comes across as pretentious and overly simplistic. I think McCormick captured the horror of forcing children into prostitution but all of the characters in this book fall flat, except for Lakshmi's mother and stepfather in the beginning, who were actually pretty interesting. Setting up white male Americans as the heroes and saviors in this book was also questionable to me, especially since wealthy white men are often the clientele of sex trafficking. This is definitely a book about people of color that was probably written for a white audience.

I can't remember what I thought of SOLD the first time I read it because it was so long ago. I feel like I probably gave it a three but it really doesn't age well.

2 out of 5 stars