Nowhere Girls by Teuta Metra (Review)

Today, I am on the blog tour for Nowhere Girls by Teuta Metra, out now on Kindle and coming soon in Hardback Edition on 8th March 2019 for International Womens Day!

Nowhere Girls is a dramatic, gripping tale of a woman named Sara, who just wants a better life, even if it means leaving everything she’s ever known behind her, and her friend Alba, who took a much different path. It’s an intense read and I’d highly recommend it.

Sara lives in Albania, poverty is rife, sexism is the norm, and corruption is inescapable. She has two best friends, Alba, who seems to glide through life by greasing palms, and Ina, a tragic soul with a life in disarray. Working as a journalist, she is mocked, underpaid and generally treated like rubbish, when all the while, it strains her family relationships with her husband and son. Meanwhile, Alba is working her way in to the upper classes, a taste for the “finer things” and everyone else is a means to and end.

This book really pulled at my heart with the way the author wrote about the struggles and hardships endured. I was constantly rooting for Sarah, hoping things would work out, that she would get a break and the respect she deserved. This book is no fairy-tale. It feels incredibly realistic in the sense that things aren’t magically okay. The characters have to work for their lives and for some, things turn out better than others.

Fed up, Sara decides that the family should to go to her cousin in Antwerp. Scared, but convinced this would be better for her and her family. Her cousin assures her that it can be her home. Having applied for a visa, the plan was set in motion, but her son was denied travel and needed to stay being in Albania. What Sara didn’t realise, was that she would have to endure the lengthy process of seeking asylum and whether she would be granted residency, whether she would see her son again, whether things would work out, or not.

I felt so many emotions while reading this tale, and Sara’s tension radiated through the pages. I shared her anxiety, her grief, her joy. It felt incredibly fast paced at times and a lot of things occurred. Admittedly, I know very little about Albania, but my heart aches for anyone who has to endure such hardship, but I also commend any woman who works so hard to deal best with the cards she’s been dealt. It also makes me extraordinarily grateful that I don’t have to deal with these levels of such toxicity, and I hope one day, no woman will have to endure what these women have had to go through.

About The Book

Friends Alba and Sara could not be more different. While Alba is forcing her way into the upper echelons of Albanian’s richest and most powerful, Sara is working more than one job as a struggling journalist. Both desperate to escape their corrupt country, they’re quickly dragged into a sordid world of politics and lies. 

When tragedy strikes their friend Ina, the two women must come together to save her little boy. Can they put away their troubles and secure a better future for the child? Or will their past catch up with them?

NOWHERE GIRLS is a thrilling tale of love, lies and the lengths a woman will go to for freedom.

About The Author

Now a fiction writer, Teuta Metra’s experience as an Albanian journalist has made her an expert on the struggles of women from her country.

Author, journalist and teacher, Teuta now lives in The Netherlands with her husband and two sons.