I read Top Girl with fraught nerves and such investment in Danielle’s story that several events hit me like an emotional gut punch. 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'. He keeps talking about how she will soon be ‘legal’ and makes it out that he is being respectful, but in hindsight, Danielle is keenly aware he had a ticking clock to taking her virginity. Huge thanks to Mel Sambells who gifted me a review copy of this stunning, and timely, autobiography- ‘Top Girl’ is published on 03/03/2022 in paperback from Mardle Books publishers. The writing style is informal and conversational throughout which helps to make Danielle’s account not only immensely readable but accessible and relatable to a younger audience.

Absolutely, it offers a remarkable insight into experiences of children on the margins, vulnerable children and anything that helps them to be better understood and thus helped is invaluable in my opinion. I think this would be a useful read for those working with young people, if nothing else but to remind that despite appearances and behaviours, children are children. Her cleverness has been exploited by her school who never really 'got' her or supported her, she has been abandoned by her family who moved to Greece and left her in a foster home.

Even while earning big money doing her thing, she frittered it on designer accessories and hair extensions. Groomed by a gang member from the young age of twelve, it doesn’t take much imagination to see how a young girl could be manipulated and get caught up in the gang life.

A turning point comes when Danielle is arrested and – with the help of a probation officer – she begins to question whether she really is ‘top girl’ after all.

It’s astonishing how in the blink of an eye and a small white lie, this girls life can go from being a normal 12 year old, to a county lines top girl. Betrayed by the police after a brutal gang rape, she finds protection under the wing of organized criminals and falls in love with the local ‘top boy’.

This is a harrowing story of how failure by the school, the police and social services drives people further into the abusive dangerous lives they have become involved with. Interestingly Danielle repeatedly mentioned the notion of gangs being an external concept and not the view held by those involved. CW: drug abuse, grooming, gang violence, assault, rape, sexual assault and addiction ⚠️ This book is a gripping and enlightening memoir about gang violence and county lines drug culture. 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’.The brutal attack Danielle suffered at the age of twelve was truly horrendous and extremely harrowing to read. CW: Police brutality, Police corruption, extreme violence/torture, murder, rape, sexual assault, victim blaming, drug use and dealing. Danielle’s gritty, emotional, no-holds-barred memoir 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. Gritty, explosive and darkly emotional, this factual true crime memoir needs as much publicity as it can, to raise awareness of ‘gang’ life and drug crime and I’d happily recommend to any reader who isn’t easily upset or offended.

Red flags abound to her, now, as an adult and as a parent, but, as a child, those you turn to for advice, or those who could have, and should have seen warning signs of grooming, abuse, sexual assault and violence encroaching on this young, very young, girl and acted accordingly.This was curious and got me thinking about the criminalisation and stigmatisation of certain groups – yes this group were absolutely breaking the law, but for Danielle they were also looking out for each other, affording her some protection and earning a living. 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. It’s meant to shock and really it should be read by teenagers up and down the country to show that ‘gang’ life for girls is not glamorous but dangerous and menacing. Groomed and manipulated from the age of 12, Danielle tells her story with startling candour and extremely graphic detail.