REVIEW for Hot (Broke) Messes

Thank you to the wonderful people at Hachette Book Group for sending me this book.

TITLE: Hot (Broke) Messes

AUTHOR: Nancy Trejos

GENRE: Memoir/Personal Finance

RATING: 3 Stars



I was really looking forward to reading Hot (Broke) Messes. Having enjoyed other books written on this subject matter, I was excited.

As soon as I started reading this one however, I knew that it was not going to be quite the type of book I thought it would be.

Unlike the book Save Karyn, this book is more of a mix between memoir (the author's own personel experiences) mixed in with financial and statistical information. This did not really work all that well for me. While I could see the intent behind structuring the book this way, I always felt a little cheated when we got into numbers and statistics.

What I enjoy, when reading these types of books, is the personal story of the author. It makes me feel as though I am not alone out there and I also like the fact that usually mixed in with the story you can find humour and some handy tips on how to get out of debt (i.e. selling your stuff on Ebay).

But in this book, although the author does share her own experiences, she always follows up her stuff with boring statistics or she will follow it up with the story of someone else who has exprienced the same issues. I know this is meant to inform, but it only served to make this book feel disjointed to me.

I really only wanted to read about the author's experiences and how she got through them. If I wanted to read dry facts about debt, etc. I would pick up a different type of book.

This was not a horrible read, just not what I was expecting.