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corsarahnera's review against another edition
5.0
5 stars because the reader gets the information that is expected.
How is a woman trafficked in Brunai to satisfy the sexual (and not only sexual) needs of a narcissist prince with shit-loads of money at his disposal.
If you are interested in this, please go ahead and read the book. If you are interested in the fairy tale of a harem, this is not a fairy tale. This is reality. This is what Jeffrey Epstein women and girls trafficking must have looked like, this is what the Thai King Rama X harem probably looks like. This is reality.
Interesting and informative.
It is a rare glimpse inside the life of the Sultan and the Price Jefri lives in Brunei. Everything they do in their private life is very interesting. Most of the situations described in the book are forbidden by the sharia law in Brunei and normal citizens would be stoned to death or have their hands and feet cut off.
In Brunei, there are no fair elections and a huge reserve of Oil. So you can imagine the human rights violations that may take place in a country where the Sultan is a god and the common citizen has no rights. everything is own by a small amount of hyper-rich personalities and one of them is Prince Jefri, which is the focus of this book.
Another interesting aspect of life in Brunei, a country where there is no freedom of speech for a normal citizen, is the EXTREME surveillance, the bodyguards everywhere, the phones are tapped, the cameras are behind every mirror, how locked-down and isolated the girls were. The fact that the girls passports were taken (confiscated?) at the arrivals. The fact that inside the hotels (that belong to Prince Jefri anyway) the girls had no way to get out as there was a guard (spy?) outside their doors. These details help the reader to understand how human trafficking works and give a picture of how suffocating must be to live in a country where there is no freedom whatsoever.
However, Jillian is not a finance expert and she does not get any confidential information about how prince Jefri was “stealing money from Brunei” or “mismanaging the finance of the Sultan” or secret agreement over the oil and the gas resources with other countries etc… This news came out later in the newspapers.
How is a woman trafficked in Brunai to satisfy the sexual (and not only sexual) needs of a narcissist prince with shit-loads of money at his disposal.
If you are interested in this, please go ahead and read the book. If you are interested in the fairy tale of a harem, this is not a fairy tale. This is reality. This is what Jeffrey Epstein women and girls trafficking must have looked like, this is what the Thai King Rama X harem probably looks like. This is reality.
Interesting and informative.
It is a rare glimpse inside the life of the Sultan and the Price Jefri lives in Brunei. Everything they do in their private life is very interesting. Most of the situations described in the book are forbidden by the sharia law in Brunei and normal citizens would be stoned to death or have their hands and feet cut off.
In Brunei, there are no fair elections and a huge reserve of Oil. So you can imagine the human rights violations that may take place in a country where the Sultan is a god and the common citizen has no rights. everything is own by a small amount of hyper-rich personalities and one of them is Prince Jefri, which is the focus of this book.
Another interesting aspect of life in Brunei, a country where there is no freedom of speech for a normal citizen, is the EXTREME surveillance, the bodyguards everywhere, the phones are tapped, the cameras are behind every mirror, how locked-down and isolated the girls were. The fact that the girls passports were taken (confiscated?) at the arrivals. The fact that inside the hotels (that belong to Prince Jefri anyway) the girls had no way to get out as there was a guard (spy?) outside their doors. These details help the reader to understand how human trafficking works and give a picture of how suffocating must be to live in a country where there is no freedom whatsoever.
However, Jillian is not a finance expert and she does not get any confidential information about how prince Jefri was “stealing money from Brunei” or “mismanaging the finance of the Sultan” or secret agreement over the oil and the gas resources with other countries etc… This news came out later in the newspapers.
kinseyelise's review against another edition
4.0
This book was sad and fascinating, a look into a whole different world. It drew me in. I wanted to hear Jill’s story and understand her motivations, and she succeeded in doing that.
uwleahsara's review against another edition
1.0
kind of interesting story, but lots of meandering thoughts and not well written
runlaurelrun's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
fast-paced
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Sexual content, and Pedophilia
damsorrow's review against another edition
1.0
It makes me sad that I did not like this book but I did not like it. Try [Book: Whip Smart] instead.
bluenicorn's review against another edition
2.0
It was alright. The lack of chronology, or mentioning an event in passing and then going back to it later kind of bugged me, but... otherwise, she had a good story, a good voice, and wrote very well at times.
fomonicole's review against another edition
4.0
Very interesting and entertaining read. More literary than an episode of The Bachelor.
thecatwood's review against another edition
4.0
Despite the tackiest cover ever, Some Girls was a great memoir of a young woman's time working in the harem of a Prince of Brunei. I don't know if it was as emotionally devastating as Girls Like Us (Rachel Lloyd) or as political insightful as Big Sex Little Death (Susie Bright), but its another piece of the ongoing dialogue of women's experience in sex work. There's a lot going on here, from abusive family to depression, that could easily fill a book completely separate from Lauren's harem days.The harem days, however, are as astoundingly opulent as you can possibly imagine (and Lauren's descriptions of the opulence are probably more titillating than any of the sex work).