Molly's Game by Molly Bloom
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A few days ago, when I was skimming through the channels of my TV, I stumbled upon a movie starring marvelous Jessica Chastain. The movie was called “Molly’s Game”, and it started like yet another sports drama. But the things were happening rapidly and I kept watching until I was totally hooked. I’d never heard of Molly Bloom and I’m not a poker player, but I watched the movie in one breath and even rewatched it the next day. I loved Molly’s story and during the end credits I was already downloading the book to my Kindle. Who doesn’t love a good story about a strong, determined and fearless woman doing her own thing on her own terms.
Unfortunately, the book wasn’t as captivating as the movie. It was still an interesting story, but quickly became a bit boring and was lacking tension and passion. The movie told a bigger story as some of the events happened after he book had come out, and I’m glad to know that Molly Bloom wasn’t sentenced. As the judge said, people have been doing so much worse and getting away with it. Molly Bloom was organizing poker games for rich men in L.A. and later New York. There was a bit of Hollywood gossip in the book, some A-list actors, a lot of poker playing and money collecting, some scary encounters with the Italian mafia, more friendly encounters with the Russian mobsters, and a lot of money. Whoever wrote the script for the movie did a great job eliminating the boring parts of the book and adding more tension.
Overall, it was an interesting look into the life of underground poker in Hollywood. You need the guts to do something like that for so long.
P.s. I was surprised to see that the book had been traditionally published. Considering the amount of punctuation and grammatical errors, I thought it had been self-published.
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