Name: Calling Maggie May
ISBN: 9781481439015

Anonymous

A dark and edgy first-person cautionary tale about how one girl’s seemingly minor choices quickly spiraled into a life as a sex worker in the tradition of Go Ask Alice and Lucy in the Sky. She had a normal life, until one small decision changed everything. Suddenly, there were new possibilities and new experiences. But not all of those experiences were good. Read her shocking story in the diary she left behind.

Calling Maggie May

Amanda Autumn Berrey

A brief synopsis: A girl (presumably named Maggie) is struggling with the common high school woes of fitting in and self discovery while trying to impress her overbearing parents and it begins to weigh on her. As she meets a mysterious girl named Ada she is indoctrinated into the world of sex work and begins to skip class to balance time with her job. Told in the style of journal entries

My review: This book is commonly compared to ‘Go Ask Alice’ but it is no where near as good. I understand that this was supposed to be a cautionary tale however, there was a major disconnect between the last entry and the editors note. Also “Maggie” was not a likable character. I would’ve much rather learned Ada’s story. They also not once revealed “Maggie’s” real name in the book. We can only assume her name is Maggie based on the title. I find it quite odd that not once did they state the characters name. Also, I appreciated at the beginning that they were taking a less old school approach to it and making it seem more formal than the age old way of looking at sex work however, I feel like it should’ve been more highlighted that the issue here was that Maggie was 16. She had no business being in sex work at that age. Also towards the end there were just so many stereotypes that it got boring. The fact that the word “goons” was un-ironically used was honestly ridiculous. Also there should’ve been more entries about Maggie handling her parents. In the beginning they were constantly overbearing but in the middle they start basically not saying a word about her going from a straight A student to a C average to not showing up for school at all. And then they went from not talking to her at all to threatening to send her to Thailand? The interest level jumps are insane. I wouldn’t recommend this book