On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back

I won’t lie and say I have been a massive fan of Stacey Dooley or that I have watched all her documentaries. In fact, I didn’t really know who she was until she did Strictly Come Dancing. What I saw there was a young articulate girl who didn’t seem to have any airs or graces and just seemed to be very real. I bought her book On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back on the strength of how she presented herself.Having read the book and become aware of the things that Stacey Dooley has seen in her relatively short career I must say I am a little in awe of her. She has been put in precarious situations and met with the most dangerous people and she has shown great tenacity; she has met people who society have maybe shunned or disregard and she has got to the heart of them and shown extreme sympathy. I find her courage to not ask the easy questions amazing.After I finished reading On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back I was emotionally wrung out. I felt drained. It made me wonder how Stacey Dooley must have felt living through the situations that I was only reading about. It blew my mind.On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back is an eye opening book. I recommend it to anyone who has ever questioned the status quo.On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back by Stacey Dooley is available now.

Review also on bookstagram: @bgubnreadsI absolutely adored this book. With the current climate, everything has been so overwhelming and I really wasn’t expecting this book to give me so much courage to face it. I honestly read it with the intention of staying ignorant to the situation and just well... reading a book by Stacey Dooley because I’m a massive fan! I was totally blindsided by the way she writes as though she’s talking to an old friend and telling us of her experiences while being gut wrenchingly honest about the things she’s seen. At the same time I didn’t feel that anything was sensationalised and that was really just sharing what happened and how she acted at the time. I adored this about the book and felt really inspired to stop being ignorant of things that are hard and this book hits some REALLY difficult topics but all the while I was thinking what can I do to help this? Now I’m absolutely desperate to look into these issues, donate, and raise awareness. I would also LOVE to have a coffee with Stacey Dooley and ask her 4 million questions. I don’t even just recommend this book, I’m begging please read it!

In this book Stacey Dooley revisits her BBC3 documentaries, to bring to attention the trials faced by women and girls across the world, and the people working to make things right.At the time of this review, the documentaries she refers back to are all available on iPlayer, in honour of her participation (and victory in) the BBC show Strictly Come Dancing. It is well worth viewing these in tandem with the book if you have the chance, but it is not essential to enjoy the book. Although she has a tendency to relay conversations from the screened documentaries verbatim, she also goes into more detail about the making of the shows, and includes information that didn't make the edits, possibly for being too gruesome or just too sad.For those most familiar with Stacey from Strictly (and I admit I only vaguely knew of her beforehand), this book is also an insight into her personality and strengths as a documentary maker. She is not in the usual presenter mould, and she is open about her potential weaknesses in this regard. The encounters she has in her documentaries are clearly only possible for someone with her background however, and her immediate sympathy for and rapport with sex workers and victims of rape and violence is admirable.The book is a relatively short and easy read (in terms of style rather than subject matter). I hope Stacey will return to some of these topics in a later book, perhaps in more detail.

I'd seen, and been impressed by, many of Stacey's documentaries before reading this book. I had used some of them in my teaching, an invaluable aid to A level General Studies. However, I found reading about the context in which they were produced added another dimension to the women's stories. Stacey has a very accessible way of telling the women's back stories in a calm, factual way which reveals even more of the harrowing experiences they have/enduring. The level of acceptance that many of the woman have, while being determined to keep going when many would give up, shows their strength and fortitude and is truly inspirational. The content means that at times it is not an easy read, and I wondered how Stacey managed to keep going, but their stories deserve to be brought into the spotlight. It's easy to see why she chose to do Strictly recently, and I now understand a little more why she rarely seemed nervous or fazed by it - as she said herself "it's a dance show, no ones going to die". I hope this, and her new programme 'Glow Up' can give her a bit of a breather from the intensity of her day job, she deserves it. I can thoroughly recommend this book and hope she continues to produce her documentaries and write books for many years to come.

Every story is heart breaking but there was one tale that just didn't fit. I'm not saying this story doesn't need told and what they have gone through isn't awful. It is and they need help but transwomen are not women. The author says it herself they all have penises. They suffer and they should be supported but they will never suffer in the same way as women

Over the last few years Stacey Dooley has become a well respected and well travelled investigative journalist having visited many political, troubled and dangerous hotpots around the world.Currently watching her BBC programme, DNA, I decided to read this book to find out more about this very likeable woman.The story takes us to many places including a US women's prison, South America and Iran. Many of Stacey Dooley's experiences are not easy reading and I definitely did not agree with some of her personal opinions, but I would certainly read more of her books and be interested by what hi she has to say.4/5.