Review: Naked by Stacey Trombley

by Donna Huber

Luis and I were jumped that one time and he had to pull a gun to get away. Not that kind of fear.
This is bone deep. The kind that stings your eyes with a deep pain in your heart. The kind that you know you'll never heal from because it's not physical.
Doesn't she get it? Doesn't she understand that I want to forget about everything that happened in New York? Good. Bad. It's over. page "56" egalley

The Review

I have been dying to tell you about Naked by Stacey Trombley. Perhaps you have already discovered it for yourself as it came out last week. If you were a fan of The Face on the Milk Carton growing up, then this is definitely a book you will want to read.

Anna is a runaway. She thought at the tender age of thirteen she knew everything about the world and her parents knew nothing. Sounds like a typical teenager, right? Well, there's more to Anna than just hormones. Her parents, her dad in particular, want her to be perfect. He wants a trophy daughter to stand beside his trophy wife. A few years on the streets has taught Anna more than she imagine. And now she just wants to go home. No not just to go home, but to start over. Anna wants a clean slate.

Naked is a heartwrenching, thrill of a read. From the outside Anna seemed to have a the perfect family, perhaps a bit strict, but Anna had a bit of a wild streak too. She has the normal pre-teen struggles of feeling misunderstood and wanting to spread her wings. But where she winds up is never a place she thought she would be in.

Throughout the novel, we follow Anna as she comes to grips with her past and present. And when she does it is gut-wrenching as she realizes that she may have truly lost everything. But as the pieces are picked up she learns that she may have gained the most important thing: acceptance.

I loved Trombley's writing. She strikes a perfect balance in creating a story full of intensity, without being overly explicit.

She created fully fleshed out characters where you know their motivations, and therefore their actions naturally flow from their personalities. Sarah was perhaps my favorite character. She seems to be the first one to truly see Anna, but she doesn't judge her. If one of the characters in Naked were to get their own story told, I would want it to be Sarah.

In a time when we don't peer too closely into the lives of our neighbors and friends, Trombley expertly draws back the curtains on this perfect family until they are completely exposed - bared Naked.

Buy Naked at Amazon

Book info:
available formats: ebooks and print (304 pages)
published: July 2015 by Entangled Teen
ISBN13: 9781633750074
genres: literary fiction
target audience: young adult
source: Netgalley
read: June 2015


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