By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. This sort of thing may be offensive to you—in countless ways—but remember that freedom of speech and expression is valid only to the extent that we endorse it for people we passionately disagree with. I‘m talking about the thieves, whores, prisoners, con artists or all kinds of people who have coke for dinner. But given the billions in revenue earned by the porn industry every year, its patrons obviously extend beyond those branded as "perverts" and "deviants.

Nevertheless "Girlvert" is a journey into the heart of the valley (San Fernando Valley to be exact), the headquarters that is everything Porn. This is a difficult book to review because while I didn't like it I did learn a lot from it about the industry. Girlvert’s prose is effortlessly readable—so readable that you’re amazed that it’s Small’s first book and you wonder what authors she’s read to get to this skill level.Naturally, this is the perfect time for a porn memoir like Girlvert by Oriana Small (porn name: Ashley Blue), which doesn't sugarcoat the workaday life of hardcore porn stars and yet somehow, at the same time, manages to create an endearing, sympathetic portrait of the protagonist. Absolutely laid bare with incredible confessions and a broken heart bleeding warmth out of ambition and pain.

Performers and actors of the female persuasion starring in modern pornography exhibit more bravery and gamut more emotions than many display within an entire lifetime. There are plenty of stories in here containing some sexual acts that I just do not completely understand why anyone would subject themselves to, but I get that she was committed and wanted to try new things. Her lifestyle becomes bizarre in the sense that she couldn't fully see the big picture, but the details were being focused - but only for that moment or two. I admire the boldness of Small for just *saying* everything she does, and I enjoy the way she worked the overall tone of the book. At the end, this remains the case, her husband just happens to be a better dude than the ones she was with previously.

And although I did not attempt to look up and reference corresponding scenes and characters (like Todd did, and like I recommend many do not), I am a consumer of porn like many of my generation. It has a certain gruesome fascination, a forlorn hope that no one gets hurt, but it intrigues nevertheless. A few of the chapters in the book would have benefited from less reliance on curses and a little stronger diction. Oriana makes it clear that she's no longer exactly the person described in "Girlvert" but her descriptions of her own behavior hold absolutely nothing back.