The Year We Turned Forty

March 1, 2016
A lighthearted novel--touched with magical elements--exploring the emotional high jinks that ensue when three best friends are given the chance to travel 10 years back in time. Authors Fenton and Steinke (The Status Of All Things, 2015, etc.), longtime best friends in real life, continue their trajectory of frothy, pop-culture-infused women's fiction with the story of Jessie, Gabriela, and Claire, three California women marred by varying degrees of dissatisfaction in their personal lives. Jessie is still riddled with shame about cheating on her husband, Grant, years earlier--an indiscretion that brought about her beloved son and triggered the dissolution of her marriage. Reeling from the news that Grant is newly engaged, Jessie's obsessive thoughts spin into overdrive. Gabriela never thought she wanted kids; a successful author, she was long content with fame, fortune, and the fantastic partner she'd found in husband Colin. But then she realized she wanted more--namely, a family--and, rounding 50, she still finds herself sad about missing her chance. Finally, Claire is excitedly engaged to a man she loves, though she keeps falling into ruminative spells of regret about her mother's death and her troubled relationship with her demanding daughter. After the three best friends head to Vegas to jointly celebrate their birthdays, they're shocked when a magician invites them backstage and offers them a chance to go back in time and redo their 40th year (an especially pivotal time in each of their lives). The women are thrilled--at first. The authors skillfully whisk readers along as the friends attempt to re-create the lives they think they should have had and as they realize some of their so-called mistakes may not have been mistakes after all. A charming but at times predictable novel exploring the importance of friendship and the futility of second-guessing one's past.

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April 1, 2016

Jessie, Claire, and Gabriela have been best friends forever. They've gone through a lot together, but their joint 40th birthday party sets off events that significantly alter their futures. Jessie decides to tell her husband that the baby she is carrying is not his; Gabriela is determined to become a mother; and Claire is dealing with escalating problems with her adolescent daughter. Ten years later, at a celebration for their 50th birthdays, they are given the chance to go back and relive their 40th year to see if they can change their futures for the better. With things no longer set in stone, the three friends must contend with the problems and consequences their new decisions create. Were the mistakes they made the first time around actually the best choices they could have made? VERDICT Fenton and Steinke (Your Perfect Life) answer the age-old question: If you could do it all again, what would you do differently? A quick, lively, and stimulating tale with highly likable main characters, this book addresses the what-if moments in life. An entertaining read for fans of Emily Giffin and Jennifer Weiner.--Kristen Calvert Nelson, Marion Cty. P.L. Syst., Ocala, FL

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2016
If you were offered the chance to go back in time 10 years and relive a year, would you? On the eve of their joint fiftieth-birthday party in Vegas, three friends meet a magician and get the chance to go back to the year they turned 40. Jessie wants to keep the fact that she had an affair secret from her then-husband; Gabriela wants to go back and save her failed marriage by trying to have a child; Claire wants to bond with her mother before it's too late. Their new choices don't always work out the way they expect, and they can't decide if they want to stay and live life from that point on, or return to the presentand the catch is, they all have to agree to stay, together. There's a lot going on here, but this kind of what if fiction is enormously popular (see Landline, 2013; Time of My Life, 2008; Remember Me? 2008), and focusing this story on three different women makes an engaging twist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)