Molly Bloom spent her life competing, first with her brothers, then on the ski slopes. She was used to living fast and working hard. Eventually, she moved to L.A. and was groomed to be the perfect personal assistant. Whatever was required, she could figure out how to get it. So when her boss decided to host a poker game at his club, The Viper Room, Molly was intrigued. She knew nothing about playing poker, but when she got thousands in tips, she was hooked.

As the game grew, everyone who was anyone wanted an invite, and as the game’s gatekeeper, Molly soon had access to the contact information of Hollywood’s rich and famous. She quickly learned to cater to Hollywood royalty, athletes, and billionaires, and in turn lived the high life. It was a world of privilege, secrets, glamour, and danger.

Follow Molly on her adventures as she reaches new highs and lows. No matter how many times, Molly loses the game, she always comes back with a bigger game and higher stakes until she meets her downfall, a brush with the Russian mob. Will she be able to rebuild her life? Or will she lose everything to a game? Check out this nonfiction book that reads more like fiction to find out for yourself.

The Bottom Line: This is a fast paced read that lets readers escape their current lives and enter (albeit vicariously) the world of (very) high-stakes, underground poker. With unabashed honesty, the author shares the highs and lows of a world most of us will never see. This story of ambition, power, and escape is highly recommended for just about anyone who enjoys stories of the underdog coming out on top. P.S. Molly sprinkled handy tidbits of poker wisdom throughout the book. Enjoy!

For the complete review including Book Club Notes, please visit the Mini Book Bytes Book Review Blog. ( )

I did things backward with this one. I watched the movie made from this book before I read this book. This actually made it easier to read the book because I knew what was coming throughout. Molly Bloom does a remarkable job of describing her life as the "poker princess", I'm sure she found that the exercise was cathartic for her as it allowed her to let everything out and then try to get on with healing and with living without poker. Molly was a girl from a loving family in Colorado, but she went to Los Angeles to take a year's break and then try to figure out what to do with her life. She finds instead a totally different life than anything she or her family have ever experienced, and she also finds that she loves a fast and a big life, and not only that, she finds she's very good at running exclusive high-stakes poker games for the rich and famous. She's a brilliant mathematician which she needs to maintain her business, and she finds that she can read people better than others can. This enables her to become very successful and very rich in a relatively short time. Like most successful people, Molly makes some enemies along the way, and due to the nature of her business some of these enemies are very rich, powerful and influential. Using her wits, she manages to keep going and after some rather catastrophic failures, she still manages to pick herself up and come back stronger than ever. That is until she comes up against the United States government and the FBI. Finally Molly's world comes crashing down, and then we see her strength emerge and she rebuilds her life from the rather huge pile of ash that her former life became. Molly Bloom does not spare us any details about her successes and her failures. The book is an honest portrayal of a young woman who overcomes all obstacles put in her way, and how she develops into the woman she is today. Power is a very addictive drug, and Molly learns the hard way that misused power can be a very bitter enemy indeed. The book is a quick read, and highly addictive in its own right. It showed me a lifestyle that I never knew existed, and it made me appreciate my simple, quiet life even more than I already do. ( )