review: spent by avis cardella

Perhaps Spent’s blurb from Susan Squire gave me false expectations. Squire started off by saying, “These are the confessions of a real shopaholic…” which is probably why I expected Avis Cardella to approach her shopping addiction with the same hilarity Sophie Kinsella uses when writing about Becky. Nothing about Spent even remotely approaches comedy; it is depressing through and through. Cardella doesn’t even enjoy her purchases; she immediately throws them in the closet with tags on never to look at them again. Spent is also not particularly well-written or edited. For example, Cardella goes from lamenting having to pay the rent by herself now that she and the fiancé have broken up to being consumed by her fertility woes. I wondered why she would be worried about having a child while not in a relationship until I realized that the scene had occurred while Cardella was still engaged.
1/5
Review copy provided by the publisher, Little, Brown and Company.