The Invisible Girl

LoveReading Says

Part of Louise Allen’s Slave Girls series that uncovers the horrors of County Lines child abuse, The Invisible Girl shares the harrowing story of Mei Ling. At the age of fifteen, Mei is “a gifted and hardworking student who comes from a loving, supportive family who wanted the best for her.

She is a teenager who aspired to go to Oxford, perhaps study at the Saïd Business School”. Then, after a wonderful first year in the UK, a time filled with joy and promise, Mei’s life unravels when her parents have to return to China and she’s left in the care of a family friend who in turn leaves in a horrible place, with a horrible man who takes her to work in a nail bar. 

Mei’s protests (“But I am too young to be working. I should be going to school”) are in vain (“You will be trained to work in the shop and do nails”), and there’s much, much worse to come when Mei is forced into servitude, raped multiple times, and made to work at “Benetton Nights”, which the author describes as “that particular and grotesque intersection of racism, sexual exploitation and political hypocrisy”, for “the men who attend such events often campaign publicly against immigration while privately purchasing access to migrant women and girls”.

Steeped in the author’s professional background (she has over two decades’ experience as a therapeutic foster carer, trainer and advocate), The Invisible Girl is a hard-hitting read that exposes the horrors of modern-day slavery and County Lines atrocities through a moving personal lens.

The author’s rallying cry for those who work with children and young people to log and escalate any concerns is also powerful: “Please. Your input could be the piece of the jigsaw that finally puts everything together. The file is sometimes all we have, and one day it might become the picture that someone can finally see”.

Reviewed by Joanne Owen
Joanne Owen’s lifelong love of reading and writing began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, and very much wished that witches (and Mrs Pepperpot) were real.
More reviews by Joanne Owen

About The Invisible Girl

Slave Girls, a new series by bestselling author Louise Allen, reveals a shocking modern-day scandal of County Lines - the single most dangerous form of systematic child abuse prevalent today.

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