Thank you Simon & Schuster (Australia) and Netgalley for this ARC.

This was a 4.5 star book for me.
I always appreciate books that provide the opportunity to play witness, in some small way, to different lifestyles and careers. Madam most certainly provided this and more.

Regardless of any ethical stance a reader may have; the blood, sweat and tears that Antonia put into “The Bach” is evident in her memoir and
I became quickly engrossed.

The memoir will no doubt be confronting to some readers, it’s raw, it doesn’t hold back. It outlines life choices that could be confronting for some readers. The girls who worked there were varied and came to “The Bach” for a myriad of reasons. Some for these reasons were never going to align within an “Ethical agency” and as Antonia aptly stated “ adding them was like tossing bottles on the blaze. They melt, and the whole thing starts to stink”.

The book runs through numerous examples of “booking requests” received through clients and the language they use. It wasn’t sugar coated and could never have been to create the impact I’m sure was hoped to be made. Indeed there is no point writing about the daily running of a sex agency if the language and content is completely removed. Personally, I loved the names given to clients and tbh this is no different to other professions where “pet names” have been attributed. It is in part human nature .

The imparting message of the importance of consent, ethically run agencies and empowerment come through loud and clear throughout this memoir.

I encourage you to read it, be confronted by it if necessary and take away the messages Antonia hopes to portray and from reading this has been successful in doing so to more than one client.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this ARC in return of my honest opinion.

I was so excited to read the memoir written by a woman who set up an ethical brothel in New Zealand.

Equal parts fascinating, funny and shocking sad. I wouldn’t consider myself a prude but I did find parts of this book confronting and maybe that’s the point?
I was intrigued and invested in the story and ultimately came away not knowing how I felt about her story.

I did find certain parts of this book problematic, especially when referring to a potential worker who had xxx in her Instagram profile, but overall it was interesting read which challenged my view of sex work.

While I have read a lot of books by sex workers, this is the first book I have read written from the perspective of a sex industry business owner. I found this perspective harder to relate to, and jarring. There's a moral superiority to the book that irked me: "I will only tell you a little bit about being the mother of a disabled child, because I know it makes you uncomfortable." In one scene Antonia outs the public profile of a woman who simply enquired about working at her establishment to a client who then harasses her, and justifies it by saying: "She's out there in public with her tits hanging out, with 'xxx' in her name! Why would you do that, if you're not selling sex?" Antonia does this, she says, because she was desperate to pay herself and put food on her own table. Sense a double standard?

Why do you have to have your life together to perform sex work? People in all sorts of jobs perform them with lives that are complex. Exploitation exists in all sorts of industries. Vulnerable people are just as likely to be exploited in a factory as they are in the sex industry. With this in mind, holding 'ethical sex work' away from people who need to work to live (don't most of us?) seems to perpetrate stigma against sex workers. It divides workers into groups who have their lives together, therefore can do ethical sex work, and the rest of us, who live messy and complicate lives and who go to work because we have to. I have no doubt that as a sex industry business owner, one group is easier to manage, but everyone deserves the ability to work and put food on their table, not just women "who are trying to pay for school or save up for a trip."

The bits that shine in this book are all the bits about the workers. They're funny, resilient, sage and pragmatic: The New Zealand flavour to the book was excellent: "My sista found out what I'm doing and now she's all drama with the whanau." I was glad to see Catherine Healy and the work of the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective celebrated.

The demonising of South Asian clients as all unable to understand consent is racist and off-putting: "Watch your step, he's got an Indian accent." In general, I would guess as a client of the sex industry, you're probably not going to like this book: "I couldn't help thinking about the men we serviced – the ugly, the boring, the fat. How none of that affected their confidence." I wondered why ethical didn't also extend to the names Antonia put in her phone for her clients, or the way she spoke about them?

Thanks to Simon & Schuster Australia and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

This went straight to the top of my favourite non-fiction I’ve read for the year. I found Antonia’s book compulsively readable (I finished it in one sitting!) but equally thought-provoking. It had such interesting commentary on the ethics of brothels and whether sex work can be truly consensual in 100% of cases. Highly recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this book for an honest review. This book was absolutely intriguing. Focusing on Antonia who decided to open a business to support her family after her husband left her, the story goes through how she opened an ethical escort agency in New Zealand. I can honestly say it’s not something I’ve ever thought about, but it was so intriguing all the way through. With the various managers, the ladies who worked there and the different things the various men wanted the story flowed really fast while keeping you interested.