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BookClub: Me, Myself & I *
Month: July, 2021
Theme: A Book That Represents The Reality of Human/Sexual Trafficking
* BookClub Me, Myself & I is just a "book club" where I pick up a prompt each month and I have to "force" myself to read a book that fits that prompt.



The story begins with Lakshmi, a thirteen-year-old girl from the Himalayas, Nepal. Her family is poor, but they have made it and her life is filled of happiness hidden in the simple of details. Trouble comes when, instead of actually making sure that their harvest is protected, her step-father blows their money and does not construct a fence to keep the water away, the Himalayan monsoons wash away all the family’s crops and Lakshimi’s step-father send her away to “get a job as a maid and support her family�.

Lakshmi is introduced to a few strangers along her long journey from the Himalayas to India, where she arrives at “Happiness House�. However, of happiness that place has little of. She soon realizes the dark truth: she has been sold into prostitution. She is told she is trapped there until she paid off her family’s debt but we all those that is a lie and Lakshmi will never get out of there.

I knew this book was going to break my heart. And so it did.

The book is divided in incredible small chapters, each aimed to one feeling or event. It did make this intense emotionally heavy book seem lighter and much easier to read than if it was divided in the standard method.

Regardless, that does not make the story itself lighter. The author does not shy away from giving specific details of what Lakshmi experiences, including sexual assault and sexual violence. It is not easy to read those parts and, every time I did, it was like getting pushed in the gut and heart.

Even though Lakshmi might be a fictional character, her story has little of fiction. Lakshmi’s story is the story of millions of countless other girls who face the same story every single day and every single year, thousands of new girls are introduced to this story. Human and sexual trafficking is real and it affects millions of people every day but it still feels surreal for those who � fortunately � do not have any contact with it.

I wish I could hug every single one of these girls.

I wish I could save them.

I truly don’t know how much to write in this review because, if I allow myself, I will turn this into an essay. So this short review will have to do it. The beauty of this book can only be known if you actually read it.

Overall, the book is a wonderful book, beautifully written through the perspective of a thirteen-year-old who is extremely innocent and naïve loose her childhood and her innocence over the disgusting pleasures and benefit of others. It is a book I definitely recommend, but only if you can read these specific detailed topics.



Reviews of books from the 2021 ‘Me, Myself & I� bookclub:
� DaVinci Code
� The Midnight Library
� Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland + Through The Looking Glass and What Alice Found There
� Dead Poets Society
� A Woman Is No Man
� Firekeeper’s Daughter
� Thousand Splendid Suns
� A Torch Against The Sun
� The Ex Hex
� Legendborn
� The Bear and The Nightingale