Top Girl

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It was amazing and an addictive book, this girl has now changed her life of selling addictive drugs, to writing addictive material.

It's a very dark read however, and I had to pause it several times when something terrible happened to Danielle.A solid family background and a prized place at a grammar school should have been an opportunity for Danielle to escape the poverty and violence surrounding her on a West London estate but instead it’s just the backdrop to her descent into a very different world. A lack of strong parental role models, outsourced education via social media, opportunities to find and exploit those young people and children to separate them from the herd, make them fall guys, beat them into submission and worse, all of this is like cat nip to career criminals who know e xactly how to groom them to a life they would not, given alternatives, have chosen. Her bravery in getting out of drug dealing, rebuilding her life and in telling her story needs to be applauded.

It’s a propulsive and pacy read too with Danielle charting her distressing progression to fully-fledged ‘top girl’ in an uncompromising manner that makes for a real eye-opener. Betrayed by the police after a brutal gang rape, she finds protection under the wing of organised criminals and falls in love with the local ‘top boy’. I think that makes it even more raw and intense as you quickly realise that the Danielle's coping mechanism is to shut off from her emotions and feelings.stars (half a star dropped purely for the ‘gang’ slang used that sometimes I struggled to comprehend). Betrayed by the police after a brutal assault, Danielle’s happy childhood turns sour when she finds the protection she needs in gang life. She was accepted into a grammar school, however her life changed completely after a brutal attack led her to involvement with 'gangs' and drug crime. I have lost count of the times my children have sat outside the head master’s office listening to me raging about the latest outrageous happening. A gritty, emotional, no-holds-barred memoir that lays bare the reality of a county lines insider and reveals the truth about life on the frontline of Britain’s biggest drug threat for a generation.

Beginning with a brilliantly constructed sequence, a bait and switch which challenges commonly held misconceptions of children in council flats, run down estates and such, it quickly changes pace to her becoming more socially aware and starting to kick back against authority figures. She was accepted into a grammar school, however her life changed completely after a brutal attack led her to involvement with ‘gangs’ and drug crime. She has since advocated for women in the criminal justice system, speaking to judges and law enforcement about the role of women in gangs. Heartbroken, Danielle spirals deeper into gang life and becomes a key player in a sprawling county lines operation, running drugs to satellite towns all over the UK from the gang's London HQ. Instead of trying to straighten out and get him back ASAP, she continued with the life of crime which would likely mean she’d never see him again…….We have , in effect, been ghettoised and isolated to areas which others-read middles class people and above-see as 'no go' places to visit. Manipulated and groomed at the age of twelve Danielle is soon drawn into the seedy underworld of drugs. Thank you NetGalley and Ab Lib Publishers for a gifted copy of this book, in exchange for an honest and voluntary review.

The book takes us through her journey from her childhood to her adulthood where she became involved in a London gang which was rife with harrowing stories of her experience. Danielle has a safe, happy childhood growing up in West London, but her bright future fades as she turns her back on school for gang life and crime.It would have been so easy for her to carry on with the life she had: dealing drugs, and living the expensive lifestyle she craved. This is the true-life account of Danielle Marin, "a smart grammar school student turned county line drug dealer. I think it’s also important to note that she says time and again that she wasn’t trafficked into this life style she chose it and then she chose to leave it. She has lived, survived, and sets out her experiences without flinching, without pity, just putting it out there which accentuates how courageous she is, to this reader’s mind. It was hard not to judge Danielle, especially when it came to Lloyd, because that’s when my emotions turned a little bit to anger.