Patricia Hunt Holmes

Gripping, but too depressing for five stars. This well-researched book centers on the horrors of sex trafficking. Pilar, is happily married to her childhood sweetheart, Alejandro, and has a young daughter. When her husband loses his job, painting pottery, because the factory is closed and cannot find employment, Pilar secretly goes to a job interview in Mexico City seeking a more lucrative job. Sadly, the ad she was given is a ruse to lure unsuspecting women into the hands of sex traffickers. The details of Pilar's enslavement are explicit and brutal as she is smuggled from Mexico City to Houston, where her johns are initially businessmen and eventually rough men from the local barrio, with an attendant rise in violence. Despite these circumstances, Pilar shows courage, resilience, and sympathy for her fellow victims, especially Josefina. Holmes integrates the story of Pilar's brother, Diego, whose guilt for taking her to Mexico City is enormous and who never gives up his search for her. He dedicates himself to becoming a soccer star, first joining a leading club in Mexico City to continue his search, and then joining the MLS team in Houston, where he thinks Pilar ends up. Diego connects with distant relatives, a local PI, and the team owner's daughter, to try to find Pilar and to bring her captors to justice .… (mehr)

Man, this was a tough book to start because the subject matter is so awful, and there are some truly difficult scenes at the start. (A trigger warning for rape in a book about sex trafficking seems obvious, but here it is.) Once I got past that first scene though, I felt pretty committed to seeing where the author would take it, and it quickly became hard to put down.

Searching For Pilar was a powerful, terrible look into the world of sex trafficking as it follows a young mother abducted and forced into this world. I tip my hat to author Patricia Hunt Holmes simply on the amount of research that needed to go into this book, as I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it was to process what these women endure.

The variety of ways that she and the other girls abducted with her in Mexico is an eye opener. As she is taken from Mexico to Houston, we see where trafficking coexists alongside impressive sky scrapers, and money, and businessmen, and the horror of this reality is shocking.


The pain, brutality and inhumanity of Pilar’s situation is balanced by the near herculean efforts of her brother Diego to locate her. The path he takes, and the unrelentless searching is a testament to the ties that bind family.

The book brings to light so many other issues related to sex trafficking – how the girls are treated should they escape (and well as their ability to cope with all they have been through), the way that these girls are looked at wrongly, when they are truly victims of circumstance.

The strength of Searching For Pilar is in the author’s characterizations – she does a wondrous job of bringing the characters to life. Where the bad guys could easily becomes cartoonish in stereotype, she makes them terrifyingly real. There were a few scenes that were difficult to read, and the description felt a bit awkward in the first rape scene – but I can’t imagine how difficult it was to write, so I quickly moved past it.
The book sets a steady pace and despite the difficult subject I found it hard to put down.

I was provided a copy of the book for review purposes. All thoughts are my own.… (mehr)