A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis

A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis
Irene Woodbury
332 Nook pages
Publisher: SynergEbooks
Source: the author
★★☆☆☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Middle-aged Paula is dissatisfied with her newlywed life in Houston with her rich husband.  After losing her job she spends a long weekend in Vegas with her best friend, Paula.  But when the time comes to head back home to Houston, she can't bring herself to do it.  Instead she stays in Vegas and starts putting down roots, sans husband.

Where to start, where to start... I didn't like this book.  The first thing that struck me was the over-description of all things Vegas.  From the different hotels, places to visit, places to eat, the people, everything.  It was just too much filler.  I also loathed the characters of Wendy and Paula from the start.  The descriptions of their spending made me sick.  Wendy had just lost her job in a bad economy, yet she was spending like she owned seventy oil refineries in the Middle East and Paula was even worse!  Paula had zero redeeming characteristics.  There is absolutely nothing likable about Paula, so how she managed to get married three times is beyond me.

There were a couple things I liked about the book though, and that included Roger.  I felt so bad for him, that he was in love with Wendy who clearly is so self-centered she couldn't ever really love anyone.  I wanted Roger to finally face the facts and file divorce, but he just wouldn't.  Poor man couldn't catch a break.  I also liked the character of Paige, Paula's sister.  I really liked her.  She had a great outlook on life, refused to take money from Daddy, and made her own way.  I wish there had been a whole lot more of Paige in this book than Paula.

I'm normally pretty opposed to divorce except in extreme circumstances like abuse.  I prefer to see couples to go therapy and at least try to work it out, but this book had me on a whole different train.  I was just waiting for Wendy and Roger to divorce.  I was wishing one of their shouting matches would finally turn into papers served...

Two stars, because it was okay.  There was just so much about this book that grated on my nerves, including the formatting.  I had the ePub copy so it should have read perfectly on my Nook, but there were no paragraphs and instead of quotation marks there were question marks.  Statements kept reading in my head like questions, which was strange.