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Doubling down on everything I said originally having now listened to this as well as reading the Kindle version. Adding I cannot believe this book is only a couple of hundred pages long. Man is it good! And boy do I love sandwiches.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:



I spend soooooo much time in my reviews declaring “while I wasn’t the target demographic for this one�� or “go read reviews by people who actually can relate to this plot/these characters�� but I’m here to tell you THIS. STORY. WAS. WRITTEN. FOR. MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Rocky (Rachel, but everyone calls her Rocky), Nick, the kids Willa and James (and James�� long-time girlfriend Maya), and eventually Rocky’s parents Mort and Alice are spending their yearly week at a rental house on Cape Cod. This annual tradition has been going on since the kids were just wee little babies. They’ll eat lobster, get their suntan on while swimming in the Atlantic and looking for hermit crabs, they’ll attend the annual library sale, get ice cream in town �� you know, all the typical touristy type things. All while Rocky is in the throEs (edit because the grammar police have pointed out I'm an idiot who doesn't know how to spell) of menopause.

I am a true believer that everyone should read whatever book synopsis, title or even cover (I mean, look at that house!) strikes their fancy. And lord knows I got the FOMO real bad so I read tons of things that I really should have just left on the library shelves. But this might be a case where you end up with a “meh�� reaction at best or might actively dislike Rocky if you aren’t experiencing the “joys�� of what she’s going through . . . .

“there are still other manifestations that you have never gotten a single rotten whiff of until they’re happening specifically to you. Like the fact that your vagina sweats in the night. It perspires! This same vagina that so stubbornly refuses to produce any other type of moisture that when your gynecologist’s nurse asks if you’re sexually active, you laugh, shrug, make a so-so sign with your hand. “I’m going to put yes for that,�� she says, cheerfully. “Some active volcanoes haven’t erupted in fifty years!�� Your gums recede. You are covered in weird growths, as if a toddler has gotten a sheet of mole stickers and stuck them all over your breasts and armpits. Everything needs to be biopsied, except for the one under-boob skin tag that has actual tentacles, like an octopus; this is apparently so normal that the mammogram person barely looks when you show it to her—“That’s totally fine!”—but then she puts a festive little donut sticker over it so the radiologist won’t mistake it for a tumor. You have so many nipple hairs and most of them are white now. And your period does a kind of horror-movie swan song as if it is finally realizing its Freddie Krueger aspirations.

As a gal who is willing to practically slit my husband’s throat for daring to ask questions like “why do you have all that underboob sweat????�� when we’ve only taken a five minute car ride (in frigid air conditioning, no less) to go get cat litter and a rotisserie chicken from Sam’s Club, Rocky was my type of butthole and now she’s my new best friend.

Allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the Stars