Petra X’s review of Modern Whore > Likes and Comments

Thank you Petra for the first book-related laugh out loud moment of the day! :D

Bad reviews also work against butchers, bakers and candle stick makers. Such is life.

Philip wrote: "Thank you Petra for the first book-related laugh out loud moment of the day! :D"

Thank you Philip. I can't say I laughed in the book, but thought the author's outrage at seeing bad reviews of her fellow sex workers was the same as authors moaning about the same thing with their books.

Sex workers get reviews, now that was news for me, where can one read these? - Would a short review like :"you suck" be considered good or bad? 😁

Great review as always, Petra. Thanks.

Let's hope that if this is self-published, you like it!

bad reviews are one thing, but don't butcher with half-baked waxed wickedness 🥩🎂🕯🤣

Mark wrote: "Sex workers get reviews, now that was news for me, where can one read these? "

In the UK punternet DOT com because prostitution is legal. I would guess they are bit underground in the US where women are routinely locked for using their bodies instead of their brains to make money. Something very wrong there.

Dmitri wrote: "Bad reviews also work against butchers, bakers and candle stick makers. Such is life."

But they aren't selling quite such a personal item as their bodies or books they created so emotionally it probably hits them less. But I agree with you, I'm just talking about the attitude of the author of the book writing as a sex worker.

News for me never heard anything about reviews for sex workers, but then again anything gets reviewed I guess.
But sex is a purely personal thing what one person likes another doesn't. Before I got married I did play the field a little and recall that there was a huge difference between my various partners.
So I guess I do not see any validity in a review about sex or sex worker.
A lot of reviews are aimed at either getting free stuff or showing off.
Here at GR I learn a lot about new books and some people are really amazing in their reviews they help me in my reading. For bigots I generally have no time. As for sex reviews I will see them as hurtful towards another person in what is very intimate, doing so makes you a sad person.

Mark wrote: " I guess I do not see any validity in a review about sex or sex worker..."

Some of the reviews on punternet.com are of sex workers who don't deliver the paid-for service, cut the time short, have less than sanitary premises etc. I don't see that as being personally hurtful. I see that as helping other punters make a good choice. It may be that you and I have a totally different attitude to sex work because it has always been legal in the UK and is an industry with specialised ad agencies, financial services etc.

It is legal in the Netherlands, as I have no experience with paid sex I would not know anything about reviews. And perhaps it is a good service it is sadly to often a way in which you hurt people and as I see abuse the sex workers in question because they do not want to do what the punter wants or as cheap as he wants.

Oops, my rating average is 2.95! Yet I am an honest reviewer, honestly, Your Honour!

lethe wrote: "Oops, my rating average is 2.95! Yet I am an honest reviewer, honestly, Your Honour!"

You are really great Lethe. I like your reviews and your comments and am glad we are friends :-)

People review whores?! 😲

I guess I shouldn't be that surprised, with how gleefully some American customers love to throw out "this is going in Yelp!"... but still. Is there a dedicated platform for such reviews? Or are they the more informal, word of mouth kinds? Also, are they split into sections, like enthusiasm, technique, outfit, physical appearance? I have sooooo many questions now. 🤓

"I look at someone's profile and I see they have an average of under 3, and a load of books rated at 1 star, I know they are fake, no one deliberately reads that many books they are going to hate. "

*checks avg score* Phew, 3.22!

I remember a user a few years back (forgot his name), who used to rate books with either 1 or 5 stars. With the former being waaaaay more prevalent.

I don't think he was a troll: his reviews did a pretty good job of explaining the rating. But I DO recall someone wondering why he'd read soooo many books that he hated. 😋

Pheeeww! At 3.18 I just sneak in!
I'm an honest reviewer, too, Your Honour! :))

Are we racing to the bottom? I see your 3.22, 3.18, and 2.95, and bid 2.71. I prefer to think of myself as a bot rather than a troll though as I deliberately and mechanically churn piles of unread books into shelves of read books.

And while I have no basis to rate sex workers, I have rated their books.

Rod wrote: "Are we racing to the bottom? I see your 3.22, 3.18, and 2.95, and bid 2.71. "

*waves pom-poms* Go team! =))

Ms. Smartarse wrote: "People review whores?! 😲 ? I guess I shouldn't be that surprised, with how gleefully some American customers love to throw out "this is going in Yelp!"... but still. Is there a dedicated platform for such reviews? .."

Yes Punternet DOT com. People review doctors, hair waxers, therapists, everyone and in the UK where prostitution is legal, they punters review the virtues or otherwise of the whores whose personal services they have used. I don't see the issue. Most of the reviews are very positive!

It's not so much the "reviewee" being criticised that I find weird, but rather the reviewer who basically airs his/her sexual preferences online.

I mean, it would be one thing, if they did this on a private password-protected forum or something... but from what I see this is a public website. Yeah, they presumably all use pseudonyms but still. But it's also an interesting idea of how to go about reviewing such services. You live and learn, I guess. :-)

After reading Xaviera Hollander's The Happy Hooker many many moons ago nothing surprises me. I look forward to the final Ahem review.

Ms. Smartarse wrote: "It's not so much the "reviewee" being criticised that I find weird, but rather the reviewer who basically airs his/her sexual preferences online..."

They are. And they are saying how well that whore catered to those preferences. It's her job after all to provide sexual services and if she doesn't live up to what she was paid for, people are going to be upset and 1 star her virtually with a bad review.

Those first three paragraphs are absolute gold! Honestly, as interesting as this book sounds, I'd rather read more from you

Dmitri (in Morocco) wrote: "Bad reviews also work against butchers, bakers and candle stick makers. Such is life."

Hahahahahahahaha brilliant!

James wrote: "Those first three paragraphs are absolute gold! Honestly, as interesting as this book sounds, I'd rather read more from you"

Thank you. I have over 140 books to review and am racing to get at least.. um 10 done by the end of the year.

Your reviews are so interesting, ms. Petra! I could read them all day! This sounds weird, and I must add!

Debbie wrote: "Your reviews are so interesting, ms. Petra! I could read them all day! This sounds weird, and I must add!"

Thank you. The book is interesting and is worth reading. Despite what some rather grim feminist books I've read on sex work say, not all whores are downtrodden victims of the patriarchal society. Some choose to do it because they like it as a way of making money. Nevada whorehouses rely on that.

Interesting……but not my world even though I live in Vegas

I love your reviews.

David wrote: "Interesting……but not my world even though I live in Vegas"

The author is Canadian. She now has an online sex services company called Hire A Muse where she will, among other things, read a client dirty books (or even collaborate on writing one). She's an interesting lady.

Strange fact about whoredom, Petra: Economists have figured out that prices for prostitutes don't really change much over time, or even over city districts. Why not? Too much competition, and the pool of customers is forever changing; it's not like people who return to the same coffee brand every day. And, who said economics was "the dry science"?

I suspect that getting money is more important than honesty for a lot of people. I have little respect for authors that moan about reviews. You can't knowingly put something out for public consumption and then complain when the public consumes it. I don't think that's exclusive to the self published though. I went to a panel interview of three traditionally published authors who wrote about social justice. One of them went on and on about how she thought only educated people ought to be allowed to write reviews and I was just sat there thinking "oh cool, social justice but only for the educated, white, middle class yeah?"

You surprised me with something - I don't mistrust people with low averages but do with high. The eternal pessimist in me, I suppose! If people are regularly positive, I assume they're at best undiscerning.

Some close relatives in the generation above and stretching back a few more were sex workers and I'm interested in learning more about sex work to try and understand them a little. Maybe I'll give this a go. Funnily enough I found recently that one of the buildings they used to operate out of 50+ years ago is now a happy endings massage parlour. Plus ça change etc.

Sherron Wahrheit wrote: "I love your reviews."

Thank you :-)

Mills wrote: "I went to a panel interview of three traditionally published authors who wrote about social justice. One of them went on and on about how she thought only educated people ought to be allowed to write reviews and I was just sat there thinking "oh cool, social justice but only for the educated, white, middle class yeah?"..."

This attitude is not exclusive to Whites. At the Miami Book Fair, I went to a panel with two Haitian and two Latina authors and a moderator, and all agreed that if you don't have the immigrant experience you shouldn't be reviewing their books.

Mills wrote: "You surprised me with something - I don't mistrust people with low averages but do with high. ..."

People with high averages I think fall into three categories. The first is people who are very good at picking books they will enjoy, and the second is almost all authors on this site who wouldn't give another author less than 4. The third is quite a lot of arc reviewers who may just be excellent at requesting books they are going to like or think they aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them, or a bit of both!

Kind of an interesting hook (no pun intended), reviewing reviewers? I have experienced an author replying to a comment here on GR, so I know they follow their reviews... As for "trolls" I've seen some hate spewed, but haven't seen profiles with only negative reviews. But people who give only 4 or 5 stars--LOTS. I always figured they are reviewing professionally (though I don't know how this works) and that's why there are no negatives.

Because I'm married to a writer, I sometimes feel guilty about giving bad reviews. I do know that negative feedback can hurt. But if I'm going to write reviews, I feel like I need to be honest, and the whole point (aside from the fact that reading my old reviews reminds me of what I thought) is to recommend for and against. I rarely detest a book so much I give it one star. It has to be VERY bad, sometimes irresponsibly bad. In a case like that, warning other people away from it seems like the responsible thing to do. It it also gives an author a much-needed reality check, so be it.

Renee wrote: have experienced an author replying to a comment here on GR, so I know they follow their reviews... As for "trolls" I've seen some hate spewed,..."

Sometimes it becomes really high profile when the author completely loses it, I can think of a few that went national. One I was briefly involved in was Some Kids I Taught & What They Taught Me. Clanchy trolled lots of us, and made loads of sock puppet accounts which GR eventually deleted. It got into the press. I have a review (not interesting, and it was a 3 star originally) but the comments were, however I was not the main target. I have recently had a negative comment by the author of a book I 4-starred!

Thoughtful review Petra, nice work!! 🤗

Beth wrote: "Because I'm married to a writer, I sometimes feel guilty about giving bad reviews. I do know that negative feedback can hurt. But if I'm going to write reviews, I feel like I need to be honest, and..."

"Speaking to The Bookseller, crime writer Jo Furniss said: “A lot of authors share the soul-destroying experience of seeing their books trashed before they are even available to genuine readers. Worse, like me, they feel they are given no protection by one of the biggest platforms in the industry. What is Goodreads doing to protect authors from online abuse?”

It is apparently abuse to give a negative review, that is being "trashed" and GR needs to protect them from it. Maybe that is why I have so many reviews deleted and shadow-banned? I was reading today of someone who had been thrown off GR because offtoomany negative reviews which they cross-posted to Amazon, and Amazon didn't delete them!

btw I'm also a writer, was a music journalist.

Agree that Goodreads should not allow "reviews" by people who can't possibly have seen the book. I recall one such example a year or so ago. This is one reason never to trust the stars system but to look at the reviews themselves, and if there's no review, I see no reason to trust the person who awarded the stars. Often the "reviewers" will admit they haven't read the book--which is different, of course, from DNF. Even there, I want to know why.

Beth wrote: "Agree that Goodreads should not allow "reviews" by people who can't possibly have seen the book. .."

There is a very popular, but extremely contentious member who was thrown off GR. For some reason she blamed me, but I had no idea she wasn't on GR anymore until she came back. Then she went to my book and left a filthy review and got a lot of votes. She could not have seen the book as it was only published on the island and all remaining copies and even files on the computer were destroyed in hurricane Irma in 2017. I don't even have a copy. I asked mutual friends to remove votes, some did, one told me she never read reviews but only 'liked back', I went to GR who said they would shadow-ban the review but that was all.

GR's position on people who haven't read a book from their positive angle is Amazon selling books, create buzz, rate it high with anticipation and if it doesn't ever get published even well there you go, no one will remember it. But then those same fans get upset if it is negatively reviewed in the same time frame! I don't know what can be done about it.

Nice, nice. Like it, centurion, like it! Bang on!!!

Kevin wrote: "Nice, nice. Like it, centurion, like it! Bang on!!!"

Venting and ranting on the breath of my life (sometimes).!

Julio wrote: "Strange fact about whoredom, Petra: Economists have figured out that prices for prostitutes don't really change much over time, or even over city districts. Why not? Too much competition, and the p..."

That's a bit sad since the cost of living goes up and presumably those sex workers on the street are at the bottom level of earning capacity anyway.