I received this book years ago through the former Library Thing Member Giveaways program, for which I am grateful to the author, publisher and Library Thing. Years later, I am finally "catching up" on those Giveaways; so here we are.

Dirty Little Angels is a short, well-written, graphic coming of age story of a 16 year old girl from a poverty-stricken, troubled family living on the outskirts of New Orleans. She has an older brother who hangs out with the wrong crowd, a deadbeat alcoholic father and a mother self-absorbed in her own misery. The character development is very good and we learn much about each of these family members, as well as a small circle of friends and family. The descriptions of life in the slum and rough and tumble gang type activity are graphic and realistic.

Hailey's life, along with her older brother, begins to spiral into a dark abyss as they both make poor decisions with life-altering consequences.

All in all, a dark, descriptive, depressing but entertaining read. ( )

The Publisher Says: Set in the slums of New Orleans, among crack houses and abandoned buildings, Dirty Little Angels is the story of 16-year-old Hailey Trosclair. When the Trosclair family suffers financial hardship and a miscarriage, Hailey finds herself looking to God to save her family. When her prayers go unanswered, Hailey puts her faith in Moses Watkins, a failed preacher and ex-con.

Fascinated by Moses' lopsided view of religion, Hailey and her brother Cyrus begin spending time at an abandoned bank that Moses plans to convert into a drive-through church. Gradually, Moses' twisted religious beliefs become increasingly more violent, and Hailey and Cyrus find themselves trapped in a world of danger and fear from which there may be no escape.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: The thing about receiving author-supplied DRCs is that one never knows whether they're the author's own files or the typeset and formatted files the publisher sells on ebook sites. Luckily for me, I'm acquainted with this publisher so I asked for and received a tree book copy of it.

When you start reading this bitter, sour-faced story of a family's complete collapse, you're expecting more Southern Gothic. Failed fathers, hate-stuffed mothers, frail, failing children, all the usual trappings...set in New Orleans, a place that (to me) reeks of failure on a generational time-scale...and what more fertile ground can there be for a teenage girl to discover the nasty, brutish, short nature of most of humanity's lives.

Hailey is desperate. She's trapped in a web of emotional blackmail and the sticky sap of rage and blame in a marriage that failed the test of character. She's savvy, sensing the sap is slowly turning into amber as pressure and heat build in her parents. Not very surprisingly, she opts to try putting her faith in the christian god. She's from the South, and it's a space hag-ridden by the manifold evils of that religion's ripeness for exploitive behavior. Of course Hailey falls in with an abusive, evil preacher called "Moses" (how original that alias is!) whose plans are just loopy enough to seem visionary to a desperate girl.

The problems that the adult reader sees instantly Hailey sees as positives...the idea of a drive-through church is simply ludicrous...but only long enough to discover that Moses is not there to help her but to use her. It's a horrible realization and it's an angry world that popped Hailey up, so it's no surprise how she ends up behaving in the end.

It's not a long story, and it's not a cheery one, but it's very tellingly presented as a slice of life. Hailey's growing into her full power of womanhood doesn't, in the end, break the mold set by her unhappy family.

It takes a fucking sledgehammer to the whole structure.

If you're up for a bracingly told, frankly and honestly observed coming-of-age story set in an iconic if still catatonic since Katrina location, this is a story you'll love. I did. ( )

I won this book from Library Thing member giveaway.

I just loved this book. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it back down until I was finished.
The story of 16 year old Hailey Trosclair and her family. After her mother has a miscarriage, the family seems to fall apart. Hailey is a good girl but falls into all kinds of bad situations, due to things such as environment and friends.
The story is gripping and realistic. There was never a dull moment.
This is one of those stories I could see myself reading again in the future. ( )

A quick read made faster since I had a hard time letting go of the story. Every time I came to the end of a chapter, I'd tell myself "Just one more!" Loved his descriptions, specifically of people and of how Hailey's mind worked. I found this work to be fairly realistic and had to check back more than once to make sure the author was a man. I wish it had been longer. ( )

Won free ebook from Librarything.com