Review: Wayward Girl

Wayward Girl by Orrie Hitt
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is one of those Orrie Hitt stories that means to shock and titillate in the realm of juvenile delinquency, a common theme of the time, rather than the sexual obsession stories that he sometimes wrote so well. It tells the tale of a 16 year old prostitute who struggles with drug abuse, reform school, and mostly how she is forced into having sex, either for money, or under pressure from various unsavory predators - which turns out to be pretty much everyone else in the book. Rather than a sexy and fun book it ends up being dark and disturbing. At some point I began paging through the book to see how much was left. Not a good sign. Hitt often employs an implausible happy ending in his books that go against any noir sensibilities that the book may have had, and here we find another forehead slapper. An incongruous ending for this disappointing and depressing novel.

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