First and foremost, let me be abundantly clear:
We are 100% pro-sex work over here. It’s the oldest profession in history, and we firmly stand by the belief that bodily autonomy means doing whatever you need or want with your own body. We are pro-sex, pro-choice, pro-options, all of it.

That’s why I was genuinely excited to read this memoir, expecting an insightful exploration of why sex work is inherently feminist. At its core, it embodies everything we stand for: our bodies, our choice.

This… was not that. This woman is insufferable.

Right out the gate, she radiates the strongest Pick-Me energy I have ever seen. The tired, overplayed “I never got along with girls; they’re too much drama” rhetoric makes an early appearance. (Paraphrasing, but trust me, that’s the vibe.) She refers to her male friends as “my boys” and constantly distances herself from other women. At one point, I even wrote in my notes, “Dear lord, I hope this doesn’t end up as a Pick-Me How-To Guide.”

And honestly? It kind of does.

At every opportunity, she discredits and demeans other women. One particularly eye-roll-worthy moment was when a regular of hers trashed his previous escorts. Instead of shutting it down, she co-signs the shade, saying, “The piece that didn’t make sense to me was how the other women he’d hired were so bad at their jobs.” Excuse me?! Did it never occur to you that not everyone has chemistry, and some people are just picky? Her constant jabs at her coworkers were relentless.

Then there’s her completely skewed take on men. She argues that men aren’t just horny opportunists but actually appreciate the natural female form more than women do. What?! Sure, society has historically enabled men to objectify women without consequence, but if anyone appreciates the female form, it’s lesbians, and they somehow manage to do it without projecting hostility just to get their rocks off.

And don’t even get me started on the final stretch of the book. A whole third of it is dedicated to her existential crisis over what she’s going to do when one of her regulars, who has a brain tumor, dies. Sis… you have other clients. You will move on. Then she has the audacity to act shocked that she wasn’t included in his will. Like, what?! She tries to play it off with a half-hearted “I wasn’t expecting to be put in the will or anything, but…” No, girl. Yes, you were. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have brought it up.

And the grand finale? A random, forced, cliché-filled love story about how she meets her husband and finds “true love.” The sudden shift in tone is so jarring it feels like a completely different book.

Needless to say…. This one is a no for me…Needless to say, this one is a NO for me
⭐️⭐️/5—generously.


This memoir was a disappointment. Instead of a feminist take on sex work, the author exudes major Pick-Me energy, constantly bashing other women while praising men. This book adds nothing to the important conversation except just more internalized misogyny.

An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work by Charlotte Shane was loosely structured around three eras in Shane's life. First, her high school self and her group of male friends, with whom she had her first sexual unsatisfying experiments left her still curious about how it felt to be desired. Second, her long-term relationship with a client showed one-sided romantic love that could still offer some level of connection. Third, and most briefly, she contrasts her love for her husband with her feelings for men during her career as an escort. True to its title, it's a very honest book in that Shane doesn't have easy answers to the questions she asks herself regarding womanhood, desire, misogyny, being desired, and what drives people to either pay for sex or offer it for payment.

I love a good memoir, so when I saw this was a memoir of sex work I was intrigued. This was an interesting book looking at how men and women struggle in theri attempts at bonding, regardless of their intentions.

This is such an interesting read--thanks so much for the copy!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy of this title in exchange for honest feedback

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for the e-ARC!
Never underestimate how big the impact inside of a small book can be. Shane’s voice in this memoir is raw, vulnerable and, as the title obviously states, honest. She writes with a self awareness and understanding of her own emotions that made me both laugh and cry. Even in one moment that felt like it was leaning towards absolution, she still is so articulate and real. I admittedly had little to no expectation for what this would be but I was blown away! Adding Prostitute Laundry to my wishlist right now.

I would’ve liked the book to focus more on her experiences and insights from doing sex work but a large part of the story followed the thread of her “relationship” with a longtime client. I wasn’t very interested in that. I also didn’t agree with a lot of her opinions but she did offer some valuable insights.

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”