Following some feedback to my original review of this book, I have revised it.

Owing to deteriorating financial and personal circumstances, Dawn Annandale turned to a life of prostitution and her clients know her by the name of Elizabeth.

Dawn brought many of her problems on herself in that she ended up with six children but despite having a husband who seemed to be neither use nor ornament after the first flush of married life she insisted that her children were privately educated.

In my opinion there is nothing wrong with wanting the best for your own children and if you think that it is important to educate them at a private school, fine: it is usually expensive however, so be ready for that!

School fees, uniforms and out of school activities are not free. Neither are gas and electricity and food. Dawn's husband was the foreman in the family building business but he lacked ambition both at work and at home. As the debts mounted, Dawn feared for her children and their future lives and having got to six of them decided it was time to act. She responded to an advetisement for escort girls and her next three years became a life of sex, late nights and lies.

What makes this book readable is the way that she regales us with stories, all credible as far as I know, of the men she meets. We are introduced to a medical doctor, her first client, who teaches her some smart moves that she continued to use thereafter. She sleeps with the tall, the athletic and the challenged. She entertains, she's a confidante and she becomes a fixation for some of her clients.

Fickle as they are, men fall in love with her: she claims that a multi millionaire was one such man but she turned him down. Dawn tells us that many of her clients tell her she was fantastic: well she would say that wouldn't she, to quote anothe lady of easy virtue from another era!

What doesn't quite ring true for me is the explanation that we read about the extent of the debts and earnings. I suppose it is possible that Dawn's debts were so huge that she was driven to become a lady of the night. She then lays out for us the £1,000 per client, the £400 a night, the four or even five men a night she has sex with. However, even after more than two years she is only just paying off her debts and scratching a living. Either she is just a spendthrift or this side of her story needs to be revised for my benefit.

Dawn's former husband, she is separate from him well before the book ends, also has a financial duty so where was his contribution?

Read the book yourself and make up your own mind but I think she needs an accountant to edit the book!

Dawn also spells out many aspects of her personal life: she presents her husband as largely useless. She tells over and over again why she is doing what she is doing: I got it, Elizabeth, from just about the first page so I didn't need to feed on your paranoia every other page.

She tells us all about her children and presents herself as the doting mother just trying to do her best. Let's accept she is a good and loving mother: I cannot sit in judgement on her and say that she is anything but: by the time I'd got around half way through the book I was thinking that maybe she doth protest too much!

She found another man with whom she fell in love and he drifts in and out of the story but is one who cannot be told! She tells us that he has her followed by a private detective at one time and still she says she loves him: he wants to know more about her! Would you want a relationship with someone who was having your every moved trailed and logged. A part of the story that would cause me pause for thought: I'm not sure that I could tolerate a partner or intimate having me followed; but then again, it's never happened to me.

Dawn also tells us that she was followed by another private detective ... read the book and find out who paid that one! One private detective is an accident but two, that's just careless!

This is a story with a series of morals: safety of these ladies, rape, necessity, double lives. There are also the stories of the men she meets: I don't feel that I should ruin the story by cherry picking the often entertaining and bemusing men she meets! I felt, however, that the book contained a predetermined mix of sexual athletes, sad and lonely men, perverts, swingers and rapists: almost as if they were chosen according to a formula.

I have to say that I did find the story interesting and I was able to ignore the paranoia of why Dawn was doing what she did ... I didn't sit in judgement on her and I don't. I do think, though, that the person who really wrote or edited this book didn't get a feel for the real Dawn and the real story ... it even contains the sexual abuse of Dawn as a child now if that's not formulaic I don't know what it.

I write this review safe in the knowledge that Dawn and/or her publisher will read it: these are my honestly held views and if the story is absolutely true, then the editor has stripped out much of the spirit of it; but I did enjoy reading it and do recommend it.

Duncan Williamson
17 July 2004, revised 24 July 2005