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tessisreading2's review against another edition
4.0
Enjoyable, highly readable book. Plenty of salacious details about her time in the harem if that's what you're looking for, but Lauren also delves deeply into her own history - her issues, her motivations, her relationships. I think this book really benefited by being written so far after the events it portrays. She looks back on her earlier self with wisdom, empathy, and kindness - but also a clear-eyed assessment of just how messed up she was at the time.
hoserlauren's review against another edition
3.0
Jillian Lauren grew up an adopted child in a New Jersey Jewish family with a dad who had a horrible temper to the point of physical abuse and a mom who did nothing about it. Lauren left her house still a teenager and started dancing at clubs, eventually joining an escort services. She was interviewed for a position within the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, brother to the Sultan of Brunei. Lauren accepts the job and flies over to Brunei with a couple of other American girls and becomes part of the craziness in the Prince's world. There are parties with many other girls from all over the world that last until the wee hours of the morning. The Prince takes one girl each night to have sex and some times during the day girls could get called. They usually get jewellery for their troubles. These girls get paid handsomely for their troubles before they are sent on their way back home.
Lauren manages to become one of Jefri's favourites. She's frequently called on and though she's not in love with him, she does feel some tenderness towards Jefri. Lauren stays around Brunei for a while but starts to feel empty inside and eventually returns home. Not surprisingly, there was typical drama that happens between women when fighting over a man. Sort of like The Bachelor but with higher stakes.
Lauren is very honest about her history and her flaws. The honesty makes her come off a bit abrasive at times, which rubbed me the wrong way at the beginning of the book but I eventually got used to it. For the most part, Lauren tells her history and doesn't judge other but there was one section of the book that pissed me off:
"In fact, the girls who came from normal jobs, normal boyfriends, normal lives were the quickest to lap up the new lifestyle. I was embarassed for them, the way they drooled all over their Rolex birthday presents. Just because you're sequestered in some parallel-universe sorority house doesn't mean you can't have a little dignity."
Really Lauren? A little dignity? Because travelling half the way around the world to be a prince's prostitute means you are 100% dignified. Wow. This part of the book kind of ruined it for me. I was having a tough time connecting with and caring for Lauren but was managing to maintain enough of a balance of respect until this line.
Putting aside Lauren herself, it was rather interesting to read about a world that otherwise I would know nothing about. It was kind of sad at the same time too. Though Lauren tried to indicate that the girls didn't mind much, it obviously tore some of them apart. This really is a rather sad story of what women will do for money.
Lauren manages to become one of Jefri's favourites. She's frequently called on and though she's not in love with him, she does feel some tenderness towards Jefri. Lauren stays around Brunei for a while but starts to feel empty inside and eventually returns home. Not surprisingly, there was typical drama that happens between women when fighting over a man. Sort of like The Bachelor but with higher stakes.
Lauren is very honest about her history and her flaws. The honesty makes her come off a bit abrasive at times, which rubbed me the wrong way at the beginning of the book but I eventually got used to it. For the most part, Lauren tells her history and doesn't judge other but there was one section of the book that pissed me off:
"In fact, the girls who came from normal jobs, normal boyfriends, normal lives were the quickest to lap up the new lifestyle. I was embarassed for them, the way they drooled all over their Rolex birthday presents. Just because you're sequestered in some parallel-universe sorority house doesn't mean you can't have a little dignity."
Really Lauren? A little dignity? Because travelling half the way around the world to be a prince's prostitute means you are 100% dignified. Wow. This part of the book kind of ruined it for me. I was having a tough time connecting with and caring for Lauren but was managing to maintain enough of a balance of respect until this line.
Putting aside Lauren herself, it was rather interesting to read about a world that otherwise I would know nothing about. It was kind of sad at the same time too. Though Lauren tried to indicate that the girls didn't mind much, it obviously tore some of them apart. This really is a rather sad story of what women will do for money.
kim_chelf's review against another edition
4.0
A very interesting book. The story of how she ended up in the sex trade and then how she ended up in the harem of a Prince of Brunei is fascinating. As is her tale of how she went from being indifferent to the prince to wanting him to want her the most. I would have loved more details of exactly what went on the harem, but it was a fascinating tale non the less.
simoneclark's review against another edition
3.0
It thought it was just me, but I came to GR and started reading the reviews and I found out that many others were not really into this book, just like me. I just couldn't like the author. No, it was not the fact that she "sold" her body to rich guys that put me off. It was that she was so judgy (is that a word lol)!! It felt to me like she was thinking she was all high and mighty and basically looked down on other girls who were doing exactly the same thing she was doing. The verse "He who is without sin cast the first stone." I have to say, though, that the book got better towards the end. She finally showed some real human emotions. I'm happy for her that she found her happy place, but I could have read a blog post about it and not a whole book.
meursalt's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Emotional abuse
Minor: Drug use, Sexual assault, and Sexual content
lunaseassecondaccount's review against another edition
3.0
Good girl goes bad and joins a harem. Sounds like something straight from a bad romance novel. Or a mediocre memoir, as in this case.
I would have liked it if Lauren had established more about her reasons behind pushing away from her parents. While I know it happens a lot, and sometimes there aren't any good reasons, I would have liked to have seen more of a change from Daddy's Little Girl to Prince Jefri's Harem Girl. Lauren brushed over the abuse, that while awful, didn't really react with me. Furthermore, so much of her guilt and anger seemed to be internalised that I got a little sick of her not wanting to help herself.
Also, I would have liked Lauren to spend a bit more time covering her life in the harem. I know, the book is meant to be about her life in the harem, right? But the way Lauren wrote it, I wasn't sure if she spent six weeks or six months there. Apparently in total she lived eighteen months as one of Prince Jefri's harem girls. However, it hardly seemed like that at all. So much was glossed over.
What works in this book's favour is that it is so simply written. It's a very easy, quick read. It won't take long, and this kind of simple, glossing over works through so much of the novel that it won't seem like Lauren is deliberately leaving things out.
Finally, I'm confused why the girl on my cover has blue eyes, while on the cover on Goodreads, she has brown eyes.
I would have liked it if Lauren had established more about her reasons behind pushing away from her parents. While I know it happens a lot, and sometimes there aren't any good reasons, I would have liked to have seen more of a change from Daddy's Little Girl to Prince Jefri's Harem Girl. Lauren brushed over the abuse, that while awful, didn't really react with me. Furthermore, so much of her guilt and anger seemed to be internalised that I got a little sick of her not wanting to help herself.
Also, I would have liked Lauren to spend a bit more time covering her life in the harem. I know, the book is meant to be about her life in the harem, right? But the way Lauren wrote it, I wasn't sure if she spent six weeks or six months there. Apparently in total she lived eighteen months as one of Prince Jefri's harem girls. However, it hardly seemed like that at all. So much was glossed over.
What works in this book's favour is that it is so simply written. It's a very easy, quick read. It won't take long, and this kind of simple, glossing over works through so much of the novel that it won't seem like Lauren is deliberately leaving things out.
Finally, I'm confused why the girl on my cover has blue eyes, while on the cover on Goodreads, she has brown eyes.
tasharobinson's review against another edition
3.0
If you've ever watched a movie or TV show that indicates the wealth or power of a man by surrounding him with beautiful, scantily-clad female set dressing, and if, like me, you've ever wondered who those women are and how they got there, or what their lives are like, this is the book for you. Warning: the answers are fascinating, but fairly depressing.
The author, Jillian Lauren, was a self-described abused, addiction-prone, anorexic with serious daddy issues and massive self-esteem problems when she became a stripper, then a high-end call girl as a teenager. From there, she was recruited to come be a party girl for Jefri, prince of Brunei, who at one point was reportedly spending $50 million per month of his country's oil fortune. (There's a fascinating lengthy profile of his subsequent legal problems here.) She was literally part of a harem: a group of girls hired to hang out every night for six or seven hours at a "party" where they sang karaoke, gossiped, drank, and waited for the prince to show up and hang out with a few of them, then select one (or more) for sex. It became a backbiting hatefest as the women jockeyed for position, ostracized the prince's favorites and told lies about them to get them in trouble, and pined for his attention, even though that attention was usually a cursory roll in the hay and a lot of manipulative game-playing.
Prince Jefri comes across as a sociopath who sees other people as toys—the author's first hookup with him came when he had guards pick her up without telling her where she was going, then lock her in a freezing office alone for four hours without entertainment or a bathroom before he finally showed up. On another occasion, he loaned her to his brother. On a third, he had guards deliver her to his boat, with no instructions to her, the guards, or the crew, to see what she'd do. She was often locked in a room on her own, or ordered to hang out in a bathing suit so people could watch her through one-way glass, or otherwise controlled and denied information or agency. During her entire time in Brunei, she tried to guess what was required of her, and suffered from depression and romantic obsession over the man treating her like an object. It helps to remember she was 18.
This can be a hard book to read, both because of what it implies about how some societies still see women, and because the author's head is sometimes a shallow, embarrassing place to hang out. She obsesses about her looks and weight, she hangs onto any scraps of affection from the prince, she sucks up to other women for position and information, then loses interest in them, and she acts as if her banal observations are deep, meaningful, and poetic. At the same time, it's a very compelling portrait of why a woman might sell herself into sex slavery, especially if the price is high and the details sound romantic when correctly filtered. And it's a closely observed report on what it's like inside a place most people have never seen: an actual, modern-day harem. Flawed, but recommended, especially for people interested in sex work and the many varieties of sex-worker experience.
The author, Jillian Lauren, was a self-described abused, addiction-prone, anorexic with serious daddy issues and massive self-esteem problems when she became a stripper, then a high-end call girl as a teenager. From there, she was recruited to come be a party girl for Jefri, prince of Brunei, who at one point was reportedly spending $50 million per month of his country's oil fortune. (There's a fascinating lengthy profile of his subsequent legal problems here.) She was literally part of a harem: a group of girls hired to hang out every night for six or seven hours at a "party" where they sang karaoke, gossiped, drank, and waited for the prince to show up and hang out with a few of them, then select one (or more) for sex. It became a backbiting hatefest as the women jockeyed for position, ostracized the prince's favorites and told lies about them to get them in trouble, and pined for his attention, even though that attention was usually a cursory roll in the hay and a lot of manipulative game-playing.
Prince Jefri comes across as a sociopath who sees other people as toys—the author's first hookup with him came when he had guards pick her up without telling her where she was going, then lock her in a freezing office alone for four hours without entertainment or a bathroom before he finally showed up. On another occasion, he loaned her to his brother. On a third, he had guards deliver her to his boat, with no instructions to her, the guards, or the crew, to see what she'd do. She was often locked in a room on her own, or ordered to hang out in a bathing suit so people could watch her through one-way glass, or otherwise controlled and denied information or agency. During her entire time in Brunei, she tried to guess what was required of her, and suffered from depression and romantic obsession over the man treating her like an object. It helps to remember she was 18.
This can be a hard book to read, both because of what it implies about how some societies still see women, and because the author's head is sometimes a shallow, embarrassing place to hang out. She obsesses about her looks and weight, she hangs onto any scraps of affection from the prince, she sucks up to other women for position and information, then loses interest in them, and she acts as if her banal observations are deep, meaningful, and poetic. At the same time, it's a very compelling portrait of why a woman might sell herself into sex slavery, especially if the price is high and the details sound romantic when correctly filtered. And it's a closely observed report on what it's like inside a place most people have never seen: an actual, modern-day harem. Flawed, but recommended, especially for people interested in sex work and the many varieties of sex-worker experience.
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.
jrc2011's review against another edition
2.0
I kept reading, hoping the book would come together as the sexy expose promised rather than the self indulgent fictionalized navel gazing of a shallow hypocrite that it was. I swear a friend in college told me this exact same story 15 years ago! Comes off as highly self pitying and Relentless and banal namedropping by someone who knew brilliant people and is seeking her 15 minutes of fame.
niniane's review against another edition
5.0
Fascinating book where the author is self-aware and honest. She is strong and finds ways to succeed, despite a lot of adversity.
It is sad and illuminating how much she blames herself for her self-destructive behaviors, even though it's pretty clear that those are coping mechanisms from abuse and exploitation.
The book strikes a good balance, so that the descriptions of the Brunei harem are not ostentatious nor self-pitying.
It is sad and illuminating how much she blames herself for her self-destructive behaviors, even though it's pretty clear that those are coping mechanisms from abuse and exploitation.
The book strikes a good balance, so that the descriptions of the Brunei harem are not ostentatious nor self-pitying.