Exploring the Impact of Growing Up in the Playboy Mansion: A Look at a Childhood Lost

Stacey: Quick read good and keeps you interested took me about 3 days to read

United States on Nov 29, 2023

CM: I am 2/3 through book, but having a hard time finishing it.
Had seen Playboy sessions, where Jennifer Saginor was interviewed.
Read reviews of book, so thought I would like it too?
I liked the beginning, sad and interesting about her parents.
She choose to live with her father due to his exciting lifestyle at the Mansion.
Unfortunately not the best choice for her, as she learned.
She distanced herself from her mother and sister.
From a child's perspective, she told about coming to the Mansion, her wonder and excitement.
It was like going to Disneyland everyday.
She got to do anything she wanted there.
Freedom, huge room, butler's, gifts.
But as she grew up, became involved in drugs, excess, lesbian relationship with one if Hef's girlfriends.
Having grown up in a traditional household.
Born and grew up in Southern California too.
I am older, never used drugs, responsible.
Reading this book, becomes very monotonous.
Mainly all about her teen years, excess lifestyles.
Her father parading young women and sleeping with them.
Jennifer being lonely and alone, no genuine support.
She wrote about women at the Mansion and in her dad's...

United States on Jan 07, 2023

Misha Cohn: I really enjoyed reading “Playground: A Childhood Lost Inside the Playboy Mansion.” I read some articles that gave me some insight into what actually happened behind the scenes of the entertaining “Girls Next Door Show.” I knew the show seemed too positive for 3 girlfriends to be so nice to each other when they weren’t bi-sexual and some of them appeared to truly love Hugh Hefner. Jennifer Saginor’s book is an expose of what really happens in Playboy mansion and with her father “Dr. Feel Good.” Although sometimes I’d have a pit in my stomach after reading what Jennifer had to go through, I’m glad I did to truly understand the craziness that can happen in some parts of the country (for celebrities). I recommend this book and will read it again one day.

United States on Oct 18, 2022

Robert Orme: I wish I could give this book 6 stars. If you want to know the true story behind the scenes at The Playboy Mansion, look NO further than this book. Written by someone who lived it from the time she moved into the mansion at the tender age of 6, she saw it all: The sex, the drugs, the overall debauchery. Jennifer Saginor's father was Hefner's personal physician. More than anything else, this book is a scathing indictment of Dr. Saginor whose main purpose in life became sex with 19 year old coke whores. I doubt that two have spoken in many years. Jennifer goes into heartbreaking detail of how growing up in that environment nearly destroyed her and how she later overcame it all.

United States on Jul 04, 2022

Samantha Cheverie: Almost unbelievable at parts. A definite page turner!!! A trip down the rabbit hole as they say. Worth the read

Canada on Nov 28, 2021

Ally: Only one third way into book. But so far so good. With what I’ve read so far, I’m glad I decided to purchase this.

Canada on Jun 17, 2019

Kindle Customer: This biographical story is memorably well-told. The author really does put you right where she is at every innocent misstep of her young life. I am probably of her mother's generation with a daughter of approximately Jennifer Saginor's age who would have had similar social references up until the moment Jennifer Saginaw's childhood is interfused with the lives of her criminally neglectful father and all of the players in the unconstrained, dissolute mansion that is indeed her Playground.

At six years old she is gradually moved into the infamous Playboy Mansion where her father is Doctor Feelgood to Hugh Hefner. To jealously control her life away from her mother and yet maintain his never really in jeopardy position as pusher and physician to the star(s) her father insists on keeping her wherever he is which is right by the side of Hef at the mansion. Jennifer has a natural childish curiosity and the awareness that she is living in the most inappropriate environment imaginable and that while at the mansion she will have absolutely no supervision is not entirely lost on her. She is initially oblivious to the other side of what she is experiencing and seeing. but slowly and...

United States on Dec 19, 2018

Jessica Lee: Pretty crazy read - but if you love the mansion and want some behind the scenes stories buy this book

Canada on Jul 11, 2018

karen: A good unbiased account of life in the playboy mansion by a child who was really there.

United Kingdom on Feb 09, 2017

Beth m: Apart from the last two chapters which pretty much repeated themselves, not revealing too much of her story. I would recommend this book

United Kingdom on Aug 17, 2016