Sinner Takes All: A Memoir of Love and Porn [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

*spoilers*.

I'm not sure if it is Tera Patrick, or her writer Carrie, who has made her voice in this story so inconsistent, but while this story is by default interesting, there is definitely something wrong with it. I don't feel that the reader gets much of a sense of who the *real* Tera Patrick is, despite the inclusion of diary entries, cute old photographs of Tera as a young girl, and lots of endearing stories.

Despite Tera's obvious efforts to let the reader into her private thoughts - there's plenty of confessional-style information here - something falls flat. She's happy to reveal that she is an exhibitionist, and her vanity never comes across as arrogant. She admits her first sexual experiences were damaging. She makes it clear that she loves sex and everything in her career was on her own terms. She's proud of her achievements and comes across as a likeable woman.

There are two problems with the book: the first is the aforementioned writing. This book is packed with contradictions and is, in my opinion, badly written. Her lifestyle stances switch without discussion: she confidently states she didn't want children, then suddenly she does, with no discussion as to why her feelings on the subject changed. One minute she is fine being a "pillow queen", she next she hates it. One minute she is aggressive towards men sexually, even strangers, the next she insists she never makes the first move. One never gets a clear sense of who Tera really is. She mentions the porn couple "curse", of how couples in porn together are always doomed - then immediately runs through a list of happy, successful porn couples. I don't understand the writing here, and I wish Tera had chosen a different author to represent her.

There is a section where Tera has been hospitalized for her manic behaviour, and discusses how she came to terms with her (undiagnosed) condition by going through the various stages of anger, denial, bargaining, etc. This is described as being a lengthy and grueling process, until the reader uncovers that the entire span of her hospitalization was TWO WEEKS. I am not trying to downplay Tera's experiences, but the writing undermines them and makes what was definitely a hard time of self-discovery for Tera into an overwrought, dramatic parody.

The second problem with this book is the fact that easily half of it focuses on her relationship with ex-Biohazard frontman Evan Seinfeld. Right out of the gate, I'm sure everyone in Tera's life flagged this guy as a problem, but she marries him, makes him her manager and proceeds to hail him as her saviour throughout the rest of the book. I wish Tera had realized that SHE is the focal point of her own story, not him. I don't care THIS much about her relationship. It's very clear that she was very much in love with this guy. VERY clear. Ultimately it ends up too bad that so much of her book focuses on this guy.

The tacked-on afterword, in which Tera reveals her husband ended up being a scumbag, ends up backfiring on Tera once again. And once again, it is due to the writing. Over and over and over and over she insists she is "better off". Stronger. Happier. Smarter. OVER AND OVER to the point where it seems she is absolutely NOT all right with the end of the marriage. This section should have been edited like CRAZY, and it wasn't, and it hurts the book.

There is a slight reek of "cash in" to this book, particularly where she plugs her movies and websites, but Tera provides the reader with enough scandalous stories, porn-movie and celebrity insights that it's worth it. It's too bad that the book isn't written well enough to move us smoothly through it. And it's too bad that so much focus was put on her relationship - Tera's story itself would have been more than enough. I don't know how many people would buy this book hoping for so much information on a guy she was involved with.

Sinner Takes All is a blend of many things. On one hand it's a nice biography which covers the youth, professional career and key points of Tera Patrick's life. It's also epic love story about the woman who met the man of her dreams and carved out a happy and romantic life with him. The book is also a tragedy, from sexual experiences with men far older than they should be at times far earlier than it should to Valuim and alcohol addiction, suicide attempts and mental illness. Mixed in are a spattering of Q & A's, porn tips, erotic pictures and sex advice. Individually these things would all make interesting books, but together it's a bit of a hodge podge.

On the upside Tera does cover a number of really interesting aspects of her career. She sets the record straight about why she got her breasts enlarged, who she has and hasn't slept with, her actual religious background and more. Tara's retelling of her first photo shoot with Suze Randall and first porn shoot with Andrew Blake are charming and her descriptions of her sexual escapades with Evan are fun.

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

But the biggest hurdle of Sinner Takes all is what happens to the epic love story that it tells. The middle of the book covers Tera and Evan's romance, the way he helped her find her way through hell and how they built a company together to represent what she really wanted for herself. I absolutely love the "he said, she said" section of the book where both Tera and Evan give their perspective about how they met, her mental break downs and working in porn together. At the end of the book, Tera throws a hand grenade to this, announcing her divorce from Evan and accusing him of using her to get into porn.

The Afterward is clearly a mistake, and one which co-author Carrie Borzillo should have helped stopped. It honestly doesn't matter how things turned out after the story has been told. The story really ends at the 2009 AVN Awards with Tera getting inducted into the hall of fame and deciding to quit performing. For her to revise the ground already covered in the book from a much different and much more negative perspective just doesn't work, it's like telling the story of Sleeping Beauty and then saying that the prince who gave her the kiss that awoke her from her slumber only did it to have sex with her and have her as his trophy wife. Even if Evan didn't turn out to be Tera's Prince Charming in the end, the fairytale romance is so compelling that we don't really want to hear a revision of it at the end of the book.

Issues aside, Sinner Takes All is a captivating read (and with over 100 pictures and 286 pages it's a fairly quick read). I don't know if Tera Patrick's tale here is a cautionary tale or one of a woman triumphing against the odds. Perhaps this dichotomy is what best sums her up and in the end we are left hoping that somehow she'll find happiness and a life that she now dreams of.

This was pretty entertaining, although the second half of the book and on--which is about her marriage--is blah and pretty indulgent. I don't know why they thought it would be a good idea for her husband to write portions of the book in his perspective--I just really didn't care about most of it--and was pretty sick of them both by the end of it.