My advice, if you can block out the romance/relationship part of this book, by all means read it and know you are in for an emotional journey; I cried multiple times throughout this book even figuring out early on what was going on. But if you’re expecting this big wonderful romance, you aren’t going to get it in Living at 40, it’s simply not there. ~ Slick – Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews
Synopsis:
s it an accidental pregnancy, if it’s purposefully planned?
Autumn Kulis wants a baby. It’s that simple and that complicated, because one thing stands in her way – she doesn’t have a man in her life. And at almost forty, she isn’t getting any younger. On a two-week trip to her brother’s lakeside cottage, a plan forms. Make a list of three men. Sleep with each of them. Allow nature to take its course. Only, a certain someone gets in her way.
Logan Anders goes with the flow of life. Divorced, single dad, he works hard, and occasionally plays harder. When his college roommate invites him to Lakeside Cottage for two weeks, he hadn’t remembered his best friend’s little sister being so hot. Nor was he a fan of her plan to find a baby daddy. He’s determined to make her list, then tear it to shreds leaving him the only man horizontal with her.
A crush revealed exposes the desire for her brother’s best friend and a simple proposition could be the second chance they both need to really live.
Review copy provided by Kindle Unlimited
So, I’m going to admit the tagline “The Big Chill of 2021” caught by eye, but Living at 40 is nowhere near The Big Chill. Yes it is about college friends who meet up at a lakeside cottage for two weeks and one of them wants to get pregnant, but that’s where the similarities end. The other thing that bothered me about this book is that from the synopsis it is billed as this big romance and it wasn’t that either. Honestly I should have stopped reading when I realized what the weekend was about when I was four pages in, but I didn’t I decided to press through. Am I sorry I read this book? Not particularly, but I also didn’t love it.
Autumn is at her sister in law and brother’s lakeside cottage at their request, Ben her brother has invited his three best friends to spend two weeks of summer vacation with them to celebrate “living, loving, losing and learning.” One friend is a manwh*re Peter Pan, one is divorced with a pre-teen daughter, and the other man is married but in a miserable marriage and has twin 6 year old unruly boys. Ben and his wife have 16 and 14 year old boys and a 9 year old daughter. Autumn…well, Autumn has had a series of bad relationships because she allows men to use her and she “nurtures” them by letting them take advantage of her giving them money, a place to live, a job, and so on. All Autumn wants is a family of her own so she decides on a whim she wants a baby. Her sister in law decides that these two weeks will be perfect for her to make a list and sleep with men to get pregnant. Seriously, that’s her advice and of course she suggests her husband’s manwh*re friend not the divorced dad who it turns out Autumn had a crush on for years.
This book was an emotional journey partly because of Ben’s situation and partly because while everyone thinks Logan (the man she once had a crush on) is this great guy he’s really kind of an a$$hole. That was the thing, he had moments where he was so sweet, kind, and loving and then others where he was just awful to Autumn and while everyone thought he was a great guy all I could see was her falling for another jerk wad although one with a job and his own home. She forgave him for hurting her in the past fairly easily and she continued to forgive him throughout this book every time he was a d*ck.
The thing is this book was about more than this couple, it was about a man needing to surround himself with his best friends, it was about a young girl on the cusp of womanhood dealing with a lot of stuff being thrown at her, it was about a 36 year old woman who has made poor relationship choices and has no idea how to change the behavior, it was about a man realizing his marriage is over and he’s not sure how to step up and be a dad, it’s about a 40 year old playboy realizing he let “the one” get away, and it’s about a man who battled his weight and lived through bullying still trying to prove he’s not that same fat kid. If the so-called romance had been taken out or even toned down this would have been an excellent women’s fiction story, but unfortunately it became a baby making sex-fest while both Autumn and Logan tried to block out their feelings all while feeling butt-hurt the other one wasn’t talking about feelings. This was a 40 year old man and a 36 year old woman and I HATE when at that age people haven’t learned to communicate better.
I know it sounds like I didn’t like this book very much, but the thing is I liked it quite a bit; I just hated the so called relationship in it for multiple reasons. The heroine not standing up to the hero and easily forgiving his bad behaviors was my number one problem. The fact that when they were together but long distance we were told about their numerous phone calls, texts, long conversations, dinner over video chat, but we aren’t privy to that and while they knew one another previously, they didn’t really KNOW one another so they went from trying to get Autumn pregnant to nothing, to long distance, to broken up, to grand gesture and we NEVER saw the relationship form, we saw them have sex a lot, we saw Autumn bond with his daughter, we saw him being a jerk repeatedly and it was so disappointing.
My advice, if you can block out the romance/relationship part of this book, by all means read it and know you are in for an emotional journey; I cried multiple times throughout this book even figuring out early on what was going on. But if you’re expecting this big wonderful romance, you aren’t going to get it in Living at 40, it’s simply not there. I’d also really love to see 40 year old characters written like 40 year old characters instead of 40 year old characters being written like characters in their late 20s.
