I am not sure why people did not enjoy this book. I did enjoy hearing the author's stories and anecdotes. People gravitate to unlikable fictional characters, but when real people show flaws, that is where they draw the line. Being a woman is flawed; everyone makes flawed choices, and we don't all publish books containing them. People pick up a memoir about sex work and expect her to say that it was terrible, regrettable, and miserable and that she has overcome and is now doing non-profit work or something. Women can like sex! Sex work is real work!
I think this ended up on the wrong side of reviewers because I quite enjoyed it.

Thank you, Net Galley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced reader copy.

I thought this was an interesting book on a woman's experience with sex work. I don't think it really gave more of an insight or different take to what's already out there. Some of her actions and beliefs are questionable.

A great little memoir that shows the inner working of a sex worker. Made me forget I was reading a memoir cause it’s written so personally.

I mostly picked up An Honest Woman because I’m nosy and love a memoir that’s bound to be full of juicy tidbits and a different perspective. I won’t lie, I found Charlotte to think of herself as extremely important and way smarter than she actually is - and that’s just based on the layout and writing style. I can, however, acknowledge the vulnerability and introspection required to write about her time as a sex worker in the way she did. I thought a lot of her youth and time as an escort was fascinating to read about, I didn’t enjoy how she turned it into a way to somewhat justify partners who cheat on their spouse while in a monogamous relationship. The message I took away from An Honest Woman, especially after reading the last chapter where Charlotte monologues about Sam, that finding intimacy (whether sexual or emotional) outside of a monogamous relationship is fine, as long as you’re still a good partner/provider. But if her husband was cheating on her, she wouldn’t want to know. That last bit kind of turned me off from the reading experience I had from this. Overall, I enjoyed the different point of view I got to experience through the author, but I don’t think the message, if what I stated above is what she intended, is a terrible take.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster, NetGalley, and the author for providing me an early copy.

I've previously read books written by women working in sex work, but this one is different. She had the typicall childhood, she was going to graduate school and trully did this line of work primaraly for her gain and pleasure, even if it doent come to a climax, so to speak. What a great read!

I found the book more moving and less intriguing than I expected- but still plenty of interesting insights. It was a split between her thoughts on why men cheated with paid escorts, reflection her childhood & formative years that influenced her career, & a lot about a specific decade-long client. Where it fell flat, for me, was that it didn't really divulge anything of real meaning or value, rather skimmed the top on topics, but overall, the writing is good.

I really enjoyed this memoir. I think it offered a lot of insight into the life of a sex worker which is something that needs to be talked about. It was also definitely well written and has some heavy hitting lines. Thank you NetGalley!

This was an interesting memoir, but it felt very high level. Everything is very matter a fact, feels very detached, not much emotion. And it could be the narrator (I listened on audio), but the novel is less than 200 pages, and really could have used more depth.

Thank you @netgalley and @simonbooks for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

True to the title, this is one of the most honest works I’ve ever read. What a thoughtful, honest, and truly incredible piece.

Often a taboo subject, especially in the United States, sex work isn’t talked about or acknowledged. However, it is one of the largest industries. Shane’s work reviews how people get into the work, why they stay, why they leave, and many aspects in between.

Raw and expertly written, Shane explores not only the industry, but also feminism, the way women maneuver in a world assumed to be controlled by men. Shane provides an alternate view - a view where she is in control, and effectively flips the script.

Shane’s writing is beautiful. The way she weaves her past, carried by her relationship with Roger, through to her present is masterful. Her vulnerability in detailing her fears and feelings in her current relationship is exquisite.

I could hardly put this book down. While pulling back the curtain on a “taboo” subject, she provides insight, humanity, and compassion to all sex work. Truly beautiful.

A surprisingly short memoir that left me a bit cold. I wasn’t crazy. About the writing style and wasn’t sure what the point of the book was. Not for me.

Thank you to Simon & Shuster for the #gifted copy.

This one was a very interesting read about Shane's life as a sex worker and escort. She candidly discussed how she started in the business and about her relationships. Shane apparently was awkard in her relationships at one point. She discussed her long term relationships and her short term ones. It was definitely a different perspective on the industry. My only disappointment is how it read. It just didn't flow very well.

Was this book AI written? Cause it sure seemed like it was. There is no emotion or feeling behind this. Also, where did the need to please men through sex come from? That whole story was not delved into, and that for sure would have brought more feeling into the memoir. I’m truly bummed this book was so blah…😩

Being a complicated woman who tries to deal with myself honestly, it wasn't a surprise to me that a lot of what Charlotte Shane has to say in her memoir about sex work is stuff I've already thought about. Honestly, it's stuff that most, if not all, thoughtful non-sex-worker-exclusionary feminists have grappled with too. At the heart of the issue, ofc, is the role of marriage in a patriarchal society, and how the concepts of sex and fidelity are deeply bound to it within those structures.

Ms Shane examines these concepts through the lens of her own time as a sex worker, and what led her to choose it as a profession. Unsurprisingly, there is a terrible father in her background. More intriguingly is the relatively good luck she's had with men otherwise, from the boys she befriended and messed around with in high school, to the clientele she cultivated (or blocked when they behaved badly) as her career grew and changed from cam girl to exotic masseuse to escort.

Tho she's undoubtedly undergone some unpleasant encounters with awful men, what's most striking about her account is how the stories from her professional life mirror the love lives of modern women who don't have purely transactional relationships with men. While she doesn't congratulate herself on how she's at least made money off of experiences that have left most women with, at best, bittersweet memories -- she does an excellent job of evading anything even remotely close to smugness throughout, thank goodness -- it's impossible to read her book and not feel like women who aren't sex workers too easily give away their time and care and emotions to men who just aren't worth it.

At the heart of this injustice is the assumption that emotional labor is something that women should provide for the men in their lives regardless of what they receive in return. In her memoir, Ms Shane is clear-eyed about what she gets out of the company of the men she chooses to spend time with, before and after embarking on her career path. It's honestly refreshing. Relationships should always have give and take, and even when both parties aren't sure of what they really want, they should always strive to treat each other fairly, as the author and most of her men in this book do.

For all that, I do think that Ms Shane's positive attitude colors so much of this memoir. Perhaps that isn't the correct term: it's almost a relentlessly optimistic attitude, an "I survived so what he did can't have been that bad" sort of looking back that I find myself doing sometimes too, even at things we both objectively know are Not Okay. This was most jarring when she talks about not understanding when some of her fellow sex workers get vindictive with their clients, especially when she acknowledges that being an asshole is the only language some jackasses understand. It was a bit of a weird note in an otherwise open-hearted consideration of her life experiences.

The most moving part of the book was, perhaps surprisingly, her depiction of her time with an older client she calls Roger, who was her main source of income for quite a while. Their relationship was only occasionally carnal: often, she felt more like a paid listener and friend than an escort. But as he got older and his health deteriorated, the tenuousness of her position in his life became brutally exposed. As his secret lover, she wasn't allowed to be seen to care about him or help with the rest of his life. She couldn't do anything that might show that she was more than just an editor he collaborated with, as he once lied to his wife when the latter found a check addressed to her. Ms Shane didn't even find out that he'd died until six weeks afterwards, via Googling his name. The impossibility of being acknowledged made her feel as if she didn't deserve to mourn someone she'd cared about for almost a decade of her life. Her story is wrenching, and I had tears in my eyes as she wrote of her grief and anger at being relegated to nothingness when she and Roger had been so important to each other, albeit unconventionally, for so long.

Not that I'm comparing that to my own history or anything, ha. Seriously, tho, dismantle the patriarchy: it only keeps people isolated, shamed and harmed, all in the name of preserving men's ideas of their own reputations.

Anyway, Ms Shane ends the book by talking a little bit about the man she fell in love with and married, with a ferocity of love and commitment that makes my heart long for something similar. She's a little vague on the reasons they fought during the most turbulent period of their relationship, tho explains that away with an excellent metaphor about drowning and coming ashore. Regardless, her commitment to being as honest as possible gives this remarkable memoir a heft that makes it required reading for anyone questioning the confines that women are shunted into when it comes to marriage, sex and fidelity. There are other ways to exist, as Ms Shane unashamedly shows, more honest ways that cause less pain in the end. Perhaps most importantly, she reminds readers that it's okay to ask for what you're worth, financially or otherwise, and to not settle for less.

An Honest Woman: A Memoir Of Love And Sex Work by Charlotte Shane was published August 13 2024 by Simon & Schuster and is available from all good booksellers, including <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/15382/9781982126865">Bookshop!</a>

An Honest Woman was an interesting look at sex work. I appreciated the insight into a long term client relationship and the dynamics there. I wish there was more “juicy gossip”

I finished An Honest Woman a week or so ago and I still haven't quite figured out how I feel. I wanted to enjoy this memoir more than I did—but it wasn't that I found the writing particularly bad or that there was anything egregious in it.

I think Charlotte Shane had a lot of poignant moments of reflection on her childhood, her formative years, and career—and the men within it as well. There were anecdotes that were so insightful. But then there were chapters where I just kept...waiting for something to be uncovered or to happen.

Overall, I think the last half of the memoir was stronger than the first, by far. But, I don't know. I think it potentially needed just a little bit of editing across the board to tighten everything up and keep the pace steady so the reader doesn't lose interest in what is a is an interesting exploration of Shane's life and work.

An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work by Charlotte Shane

I’m highly conflicted about this one. Did I like it? Did I not like it? As a reader, books like this fascinate me because I can’t really pick a side.

On one hand, I read the entire book, and I wanted to finish the book. I was caught up in the author’s world. I wanted to know more. I was intrigued perhaps because it revealed such a different world than my own.

On the other hand, I felt like the author never divulged much from an emotional standpoint. It felt a bit didactic and highbrow at times but lacked depth. Her POV and opinions were absolutely clear, but I didn’t find relatability easily in these pages. I also struggled with the format of the book as I didn’t really see any structure. There was a vague chronological one, but where the chapters went didn’t hold true to that structure.

All in all, while I don’t think this book is for casual memoir readers, readers who appreciate more unfiltered memoirs will enjoy this one.

An Honest Woman really fell flat for me. Charlotte Shane shared many details specifically about one client but did not really divulge anything of real meaning or value about herself or her experience in sex work. The only real passion I felt in this memoir is her chapter on falling in love with and meeting her husband but even this felt rushed. I really wanted more from this book as I was very drawn to it.

Shane, an author and essayist, chronicles her years as a sex worker. Her path to sex work was freely chosen. She became a sex worker at 21, while attending graduate school, not to finance her education, but to validate her sex appeal. “I felt highly desired, and I was verifiably, highly desired. Coveted, even. There was proof: the messages, the money, the affirmations. I became a sex worker because I suspected, and hoped, it would be this way: a private, minor form of celebrity.” Shane concedes that she is not the best looking woman in a room but, thanks to sex work, she trusts her capacity to charm and seduce so to convince many that she is the best looking. She also assures “civilian woman” that men’s tastes are expansive and they overlook cellulite, stretch marks and scars that make women uncomfortable in their skin.

As a teenager, Shane engaged in scientific sexual exploration with boys. “My priority was information-gathering, not enjoyment.” She moved on to webcams, working at an incall where “I worked like I was trying to make partner,” and then became self-employed. She dismisses the sex worker tropes of debauchery and exploitation, claiming that the majority of her clients were “polite and decent.”

She focuses on a particular client, Roger, a middle-aged litigator whom she first saw in 2011 (along with 53 new clients and 167 dates). Their relationship endured for more than a decade until his death from brain cancer. Although Shane seems genuinely aggrieved about Roger’s medical condition, and laments that “[w]e’d played a prominent role in each other’s lives for almost a decade, but I couldn’t talk to anyone in his family,” the relationship remained transactional. Shane stopped advertising in 2015, and saw just a few trusted friends, including Roger, who accounted for at least half of her income since her semi-retirement. Yet, she acknowledges, “I wouldn’t have spent time with him for free, not platonically or sexually, but I appreciated him.”

This slim memoir is compulsively readable and remarkably candid. Shane illuminates how capitalism and the patriarchy impact every union. Thank you Simon & Schuster and Net Galley for a memoir about a subject that is rarely addressed in such lucid prose.

Expected to be more shocked or get more stories from her escort years. This was mainly about her one relationship with one of her clients and the timeline went back and forth to her childhood / teenage years and then back to main relationship/ current events. Felt like too much back and forth to me. Couldn’t really connect with the author and was missing more detail/insight on her emotional state and thought processes …

Loved this perspective and loved the focus on the one partner/client. Not something I felt majorly connected to but was an interesting and well written read.