Reviewed by Alysha Allen for Readers' Favorite

Vanessa Bogenholm’s The Moral Line explores the consequences of a woman, Alexandria, who in her late 40s begins a career in whoredom following the end of her third failed marriage. Opening with Alexandria’s husband repulsing every effort of hers to sustain their relationship, she resorts to depleting her entire savings to move to an expensive townhouse in the hopes of reviving their former romance. Ultimately, even this is to no avail, necessitating her to work events as a sommelier and bartender, in addition to her full-time job, to cover all of the bills. After her divorce has been finalized and living in a pit of self-loathing and low self-esteem, she soon unknowingly becomes implicated in the glamorous and risky world of paid escorts and high-end prostitution. Life certainly appears to be improving for Alexandria, but can she overcome the feeling that she is committing an unforgivable infraction against morality and embrace her newly-found confidence and happiness?

With a title as The Moral Line, I had expected more of a disapproving, condemnatory view of sex workers, but instead found Vanessa Bogenholm to be accepting and understanding without the oppressive stigma that too often surrounds prostitution. Indeed, not all prostitutes have been forced by impecunious necessity or human trafficking. Some, like Alexandria, are enriched by their experiences and learn to be more empathetic, loving individuals whose knowledge of the complexities of the human psyche develop to include a benevolent, compassionate perspective of people. More significantly, Bogenholm imparts the valuable message that as long as one genuinely takes pleasure in their work, impacting one’s life beneficially, then morality is relative and simply a social construct built by a society to shame what it fears. For perhaps, as Alexandria so aptly remarked, “We are all prostitutes of one type or another,” and all that matters is our happiness and the love that we foster in our hearts and others.