I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

1.9 rounded up to 2/5.

"The Porn Star's Daughter" by Kay Stephens is a novel that attempts to tackle the challenging question of how one escapes the stigma of having parents in the adult entertainment industry. While the book delves into a unique and potentially engaging premise, it falls short in execution, leaving readers with a mixed experience.

The title promises an exploration of identity, stigma, and the challenges of escaping a controversial family background. However, the execution of the narrative leaves much to be desired. The protagonist, Tali Hunter, is portrayed as deeply ashamed of her mother's profession, yet her own decisions, like accepting a breast augmentation for her 18th birthday, seem incongruent with her supposed embarrassment.

The writing style in the novel could have been smoother, as the narrative felt disjointed and lacked a fluid flow. Characters, unfortunately, come across as one-dimensional and lacking depth. The relationships between characters are underdeveloped, leaving readers disconnected and unable to fully invest in their stories.

The novel struggles with several loose ends that are left unresolved, leaving readers with a sense of dissatisfaction. The plot seems to meander, and the attempt to create tension in certain situations feels forced. The dialogue is inconsistent, jumping between situations and lacking focus, making it challenging for readers to stay engaged.

Furthermore, the book's difficulty in finding clarity and maintaining a coherent narrative hinders its overall impact. The author appears to have tried too hard to exploit certain situations without organically integrating them into the storyline. This effort may leave readers feeling that the novel is attempting to be provocative without offering meaningful substance.

In conclusion, "The Porn Star's Daughter" has a promising premise that explores complex themes but falls short in execution. While the title and the potential for a unique narrative are noteworthy, the lack of character depth, underdeveloped relationships, loose ends, and a disjointed writing style detract from the overall reading experience. The novel might find an audience among those intrigued by its premise, but readers seeking a more immersive and well-crafted exploration of these themes may find themselves disappointed.

I wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't fully love it. It was an easy and fun read, I liked the approach for young adults who are trying to figure out their lives and who they are. My main problem is that the characters are shallow, especially Coventry. I know we meet different people in our lives but she was just a huge no no no for me. It is a good debut novel, but I think it would really benefit a bit of polishing. Thank you, NetGalley for giving me a chance to read this eARC.

This book has a great premise that immediately drew me in. Our main character, Tali Hunter is a freshman college student who is attempting to create a life for herself without what she perceives as the "stench" of her mother's career following her everywhere she goes. There is a cast of intensely compelling characters that were a joy to watch evolve. While the plot was slow at times, the book was still a somewhat fun read. The story is neatly wrapped up in the end, although without adding any spoilers, there are some situations involving some of the side characters that I would have liked to see this author expand on. I wanted to love this book. However, there were many errors that distracted from the story throughout reading the book, and made what should have been a fun immersive read a much more arduous task. The errors included typos, words missing from sentences, erratic ebook formatting, and occasionally odd sentence structure. This book would be improved immensely by another round of editing and reformatting.

Thank you NetGalley for the advance reader copy for my honest review.
The characters were pretty... all over the place, I guess is an appropriate description. I can't completely judge the lack of believability though because I'm honestly kinda like Coventry, just a tad bit nicer & less insecure. But more growth with them would have made it 5 stars, especially since the characters hated another character but suddenly were best friends & just ditched another character. Most of the book is spent with the characters drunk & or high so it was super funny but unrelatable.

I thought it would be steamier, but the one or two scenes definitely met my expectations in the best way possible.

The Porn Star’s Daughter by Kay Stephens is a cute novel that explores Tali’s freshman life at a college in New Orleans; the one city her mother (a porn star) hates. She stumbles into a drunk at the airport who later turns into her boyfriend and makes friends whom she later calls family with the least expected characters.

This novel was more YA than I’d typically grab for but the title grabbed me; let’s not dissect what that says about me!

Anyways, overall verdict: 3.5/5 ⭐️ & 1/5 🌶️

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC.

I gotta be honest. I got this book cause the title makes me laugh but this book was too much for me. For someone that wants to get away from her mother’s porn star shadow, she sure does everything to bring attention to herself. This book isn’t it for me. She’s kinda a mean girl and I’m just not interested in that. Plus, the first introduction to the male lead was extremely off putting. It’s a no from me.

This was a mess. And I’m so sorry to be writing this review. The characters were all over the place, either drunk or high the entire book literally everyone is sleeping with everyone. FMC with zero confidence and needs the approval of others. The time line was choppy. There were funny moments and that why it’s getting two stars. I really wanted to like this book

The Porn Star’s Daughter is the first read that was provided to me directly through NetGalley. A full review that may contain some spoilers will also be posted on Goodreads.

This book did take me some time to get through, as it was slow-moving in the beginning, as far as setting up the plot and the story. However, once I was able to dive much deeper into the story, I was intrigued. Taglia, as a main character, was a mess, but a LOVEABLE mess. You cannot help but want to see her come out ahead, despite the complications in her life that stem from being the daughter of Missy Mariola, a well-known porn star.

Some of my favorite parts of the book are the times that are spent together, with Taglia, Coventry, Seth & James, in the dorm rooms. While my college experiences were definitely not like these, I can imagine that there are some people who have these types of experiences during their college careers, and hopefully, these are depicted well by the author.

The “found friends” that become family trope….one of my all-time favorites.

The embracing and normalization of sex-work in this book are also refreshing, as someone who is fully supportive of this industry, and would love to see more of this in different forms of media. KUDOS to Kay Stephens for embracing and championing this.

My only real critique of this book would be that the chapter breaks are not set up very well and it was often very difficult to figure out whose voice was being used, as it seemed to be a first-person POV, but jumped around a bit without expressing whose voice was being used. I had to use a lot of context clues around the chapter breaks to figure out who we were with at times.

This book was otherwise fun and will be a great addition to any contemporary fiction bookshelf once it is released!

Unfortunately I was not able to finish this book, I tried several times but I just could not get in to it. I usually love dual POV and I was so happy when I realized this was a dual POV book, this was one of the things I liked most about the book.
I picked this book as I thought it was going to be a fun read, not so serious book, specially looking at the title, I still think it was a great title. To me the writing just did not flow, making it a bit hard for me to follow along.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Kay Stephens is amazing and I love her style of writing. She’s definitely an author to look out for and read more from.

I rec'd this book in exchange for an honest review.
Unfortunately, this book was just not my taste. The preview seemed good, but I could not get past 2 chapters.
I am sure it will find it s audience, but I am not it.

Wow, this book was so hard to get into. I was so intrigued by the premise and thought it would be so much more than it actually was, it truly fell flat for me.

I received an eARC from Net Galley.

I had high hopes for the book based on title and synopsis, but boy, did it disappoint.

The dialog jumped all over the place and was hard to follow without re-reading. The whiplash I got from the characters' mood swings and hate/love relationships.

The whole book was hard to read, hard to stay absorbed in, and absolutely difficult to finish. The author clearly has some things to unpack with drugs and alcohol.

The whole book was like listening to a preschool kid retell his whole day while trying to do 3 other things. It lacked focus and clarity.

l only got halfway through this book. I had trouble connecting with the side characters. I wanted James and Tali to get together but the story pacing was slow so at the point I stopped they had only kissed once. Ultimately, I think the reason I didn't connect was it was unrelatable to me and my college experience. I went to school at night, never stepped foot in a dormitory or attended a party. Readers will a more traditional college experience will likely really connect.

I just couldn't get into this book and ended up having to give up around the half way mark.

I did not like any of the characters or want them to succeed. One is self obsessed and with a chip on her shoulder and the other is a mopey drunk and jerk. Add in a cast of side characters who are weird instead of quirky, selfish instead of intriguing, and you get a very unpleasant book.

Add in rough writing for a first time novelist to make things even murkier and unpleasant. There was nothing funny here and it felt like the author was trying to milk jokes out of situations she tried too hard (and unrealistically) to set up in the first place. The book really needed heart and warmth rather than the weirdness. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

This book…I’m honestly not sure what to say. I liked the characters but I thought they were all just a bit over the top. For awhile I wasn’t sure if I was going to finish it, but in the end I’m glad I did, as the lead character decided to accept herself for who she is, and that’s always a good thing.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.


This one had a lot to unpack. At first glance, seeing the title and the cover led me to believe this would be a humorous read, and to some extent, it was. There were parts that were laugh out loud funny, but the core of this book dealt with many issues young adults deal with as they enter college and the adult world without their parents for the first time. The FMC, Tali, is the daughter of a famous porn star from, we can assume around the late 80s-early 90s, as it's stated that the internet wasn't a thing yet when her mother was filming. Tali has spent her entire life trying to hide who her mother is and where her family gets its wealth, as she's just wanted to be seen as a normal girl by her peers. She leave Los Angeles to attend college in New Orleans, figuring the distance will give her the space to reinvent herself, but it seems like too many people she meets along the way know her secret due to her resemblance to her mother being so strong. There is drug use, drug selling, alcohol use/abuse, prescription pain killer abuse, stripping/prostitution, a former Army Vet with some PTSD (who is a 22 year old freshman, and the closest thing to our MMC), and parental death, amidst the general struggles of college students. It's really more a story of struggle and acceptance, than humor and romance. Was it worth the read? Absolutely.

I read this book in a day and I never looked back! The twist and the plot were pretty easy to identify but the different POV's kept me intrigued to see how everything was going to unfold. A couple of the characters were so unlikable that it made it hard to feel bad or connect with them in any way. I do wish that the ending would've given a little more, I wanted to know how the characters dealt with the aftermath.


*I received a copy of this eARC via NetGalley*

This was an interesting premise, which is what attracted me to the book in th first place. a different and unique take on the age-old story of separating from your parents. Finished it fairly quickly. Decent.

I liked this book well-enough, it was a unique set up, and for the right audiences, it should be a compelling, offbeat coming-of-age or "finding one's self" kinda story. A quick read and solid writing.