While I was reading this book, I was unsure of whether I liked it or not, and after I finished, I decided I did. Part of this inner conflict was my conviction that if you are writing an auto-biography, so help me you’d better have done something worth writing about. I wasn’t sure if hanging out with gamblers and female boxing qualified as ‘worth writing about’. At the end of the day, I liked it. No, Beth Raymer didn’t cure cancer, but I felt that her journey, though approached in a humorous and straight forward manner, is important.
The book isn’t solely about gambling, at least not in the sense of placing monetary bets, but more about life’s gambles, and Raymer’s desire to gamble, sometimes at the cost of her safety and sanity. The book starts when she gets an offer she can’t refuse, the chance to work for a bookie. As she learns more about ways to make a living off gambling, she shares some details about her pre Vegas life. Her parents divorce, her adoption, her sister’s drug problems, her dad’s gambling, her past life as a stripper. She rarely dwells on these episodes, which is a bit disheartening because those moments could illuminate why Raymer is drawn to risk. The explanation of what makes a gambler, if you will. Between moments in New York, and Curacao, Raymer seems ready to take the biggest risk of all, the idea of staying still in one spot.
Though I enjoyed the book overall, I did feel that some episodes didn’t get enough attention, or got too much. Again, I have no suggestions of what should have been cut, but her relationship with Jeremy, her fiance, seemed kind of like a tack on. I understand that it makes her abandonment of the gambling lifestyle a bit more dramatic because the opportunity cost of continuing to flit from place to place and opportunity to opportunity, but it was not developed enough to add the appropriate excitement when the engagement actually happens. Raymer draws such vivid descriptions of the other characters in her life, that the sketch of Jeremy seems lacking in depth.
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