Publisher's Weekly Review
Yablon's delightful debut features a spunky retiree who overhauls her life after she discovers her husband in flagrante. Sixty-three-year-old Connecticut transplant Sylvia Fisher is leading an unfulfilled retirement in a Florida development for fellow retirees when she walks in on her husband, Louis, having sex with a neighbor. To make matters worse, Louis has lost all of their money in a questionable investment scheme. Sylvia first decamps to her uptight daughter Isabel's home in Connecticut, and later convinces her best friend from the development, glamorous widow Evie, to join her in reinventing their lives in New York City. Soon, Sylvia has a job as a wedding planner and falls for the divorced father of one of the brides. Will this new man prove to be every bit as much a cad as the one she left behind? Comic relief is aptly provided by Isabel's amorous mother-in-law, and by a Bergdorf Goodman personal shopper who shows Sylvia and Evie they can be sexy at any age. It's impossible not to cheer for the strong heroine at the center of Yablon's savvy story. (Mar.)
Kirkus Review
Bye-bye, Florida retirement community--hello, Manhattan! "Because I am an avid fan of Sex and the City (I've seen it from start to finish six times), I know that Belinda is in reverse cowgirl position." When Sylvia walks in on her husband, Louis, with the "roving whore of Boca Beach Gables" and learns in the aftermath that he has lost all their money through a bad investment, she feels mainly relief. She finally has a good reason to leave him, which she's wanted to do for a long time. She heads over to her friend Evie's, who suggests they start drinking immediately and the next day puts Sylvia in an Uber to the airport. Her initial plan--to stay with her daughter, Isabel, and help with the twins--is foiled by Isabel, who has no faith in her mother's ability to make it on her own and is determined to get her parents back together. Rather than cave in to pressure, Sylvia decides to do the one thing she "really, truly" wants: move to Manhattan and restart her wedding-planning business. Though she would also like to "remember what it's like to enjoy sex," there's no marriage plot here: Sylvia's game plan is far more Sex and the City than Golden Bachelor. She persuades Evie to fly up to join her, and the roomies plunge into city living together in an Airbnb in Harlem, with Sylvia pawning her jewelry for seed money and going for a job interview with a rival wedding planner who did her dirty long ago. Yablon's debut is mostly gentle screwball comedy, with a bit of gravitas added by Evie's plotline--she lost her son to a drug overdose, and his widow has cut her off from her grandchild. So along with a messy affair, a penitent husband, and an angry daughter, Sylvia's got that to worry about, too. But for a 63-year-old lady, she's not much of a worrier. What Yablon (who's much younger than her protagonists) gets right is that Sylvia cares less about finding true love than about work and friendship. A little sex, a lotta laughs in the city. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Sylvia Fisher, 63, walks in on her husband, Louis, and another woman (the position is the reverse cowgirl, which she knows from watching Sex and the City) and realizes that she no longer loves him and that life in their Florida retirement community is stifling her. So she packs a suitcase of fancy lingerie she's never worn and moves with her best friend, Evie, to New York City, much to the chagrin of her adult daughter, Isabel. At first it's rough--they live in an Airbnb and wash their armpits in the local Starbucks--but soon Sylvia has a temporary job as a wedding planner. Her first bride, Ashton, is tempermental and tough, and Isabel keeps insisting that Sylvia go back to Louis. Meanwhile, Sylvia learns that her experience and her savvy can take her far, possibly even to a new romance. Sylvia is a charming, well-intentioned narrator, prone to flights of imagination and outbursts when the young people around her won't listen. Yablon's debut is a satisfying reminder that it's never too late to start over.
