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Magical Midlife Madness
Magical Midlife Madness by K.F. Breene is 99c at Amazon! This is described as paranormal women’s fiction and I’ve been noticing more and more of these sorts of books popping up. Have you read any of them?
A woman starting over. A new house with an unexpected twist. A cape wearing butler acting as the world’s worst life coach.
“Happily Ever After” wasn’t supposed to come with a do-over option. But when my husband of twenty years packs up and heads for greener pastures and my son leaves for college, that’s exactly what my life becomes.
Do-over.
This time, though, I plan to do things differently. Age is just a number, after all, and at forty I’m ready to carve my own path.
Eager for a fresh start, I make a somewhat unorthodox decision and move to a tiny town in the Sierra foothills. I’ll be taking care of a centuries old house that called to me when I was a kid. It’s just temporary, I tell myself. It’ll just be for a while.
That is, until I learn what the house really is, something I never could’ve imagined.
Thankfully forty isn’t too old to start an adventure, because that’s exactly what I do. A very dangerous adventure that will change my life forever. I have a chance to start again, and this time, I make the rules.
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Wild Women and the Blues
Wild Women and the Blues by Denny S. Bryce is $2.99! This historical fiction was mentioned on a previous Hide Your Wallet, and look at that beautiful cover! There’s also a dual timeline element here. Have you read this one?
In a stirring and impeccably researched novel of Jazz-age Chicago in all its vibrant life, two stories intertwine nearly a hundred years apart, as a chorus girl and a film student deal with loss, forgiveness, and love…in all its joy, sadness, and imperfections.
“Why would I talk to you about my life? I don’t know you, and even if I did, I don’t tell my story to just any boy with long hair, who probably smokes weed.You wanna hear about me. You gotta tell me something about you. To make this worth my while.”
1925: Chicago is the jazz capital of the world, and the Dreamland Café is the ritziest black-and-tan club in town. Honoree Dalcour is a sharecropper’s daughter, willing to work hard and dance every night on her way to the top. Dreamland offers a path to the good life, socializing with celebrities like Louis Armstrong and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. But Chicago is also awash in bootleg whiskey, gambling, and gangsters. And a young woman driven by ambition might risk more than she can stand to lose.
2015: Film student Sawyer Hayes arrives at the bedside of 110-year-old Honoree Dalcour, still reeling from a devastating loss that has taken him right to the brink. Sawyer has rested all his hope on this frail but formidable woman, the only living link to the legendary Oscar Micheaux. If he’s right—if she can fill in the blanks in his research, perhaps he can complete his thesis and begin a new chapter in his life. But the links Honoree makes are not ones he’s expecting . . .
Piece by piece, Honoree reveals her past and her secrets, while Sawyer fights tooth and nail to keep his. It’s a story of courage and ambition, hot jazz and illicit passions. And as past meets present, for Honoree, it’s a final chance to be truly heard and seen before it’s too late. No matter the cost . . .
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The Secret Life of Miss Anna Marsh
The Secret Life of Miss Anna Marsh by Ella Quinn is $1.99! It looks like this one has gotten a cover redesign and is the second book in The Marriage Game series. Both the hero and heroine want to marry each other, so I don’t know what the conflict is here quite yet.
For Ella Quinn’s bachelors, courtship is all about gamesmanship, until the right woman shows them how much they have to learn. . .
Since she was a young girl, Anna Marsh has dreamed of Sebastian, Baron Rutherford asking for her hand in marriage. But that was in another life when her brother Harry was alive, before she vowed to secretly continue the work he valiantly died for. Now as Sebastian finally courts Anna, she must thwart his advances. Were he to discover her secret, he would never deem her a suitable wife. . .
Sebastian has always known Anna would become his wife someday. He expects few obstacles, but when she dissuades him at every turn he soon realizes there is much more to this intriguing woman. Somehow he must prove to her that they are meant to be together. But first he must unravel the seductive mystery that is Miss Anna Marsh. . .
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Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi is $2.99! I mentioned this book in one of my Get Rec’d posts. It’s a tender, bittersweet book where people are given a chance to redo a moment in their life.
What would you change if you could travel back in time?
Down a small alleyway in the heart of Tokyo, there’s an underground café that’s been serving carefully brewed coffee for over a hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers its customers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time.
The rules, however, are far from simple: you must sit in one particular seat, and you can’t venture outside the café, nor can you change the present. And, most important, you only have the time it takes to drink a hot cup of coffee—or risk getting stuck forever.
Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of traveling to another time: a heartbroken lover looking for closure, a nurse with a mysterious letter from her husband, a waitress hoping to say one last goodbye and a mother whose child she may never get the chance to know.
Heartwarming, wistful and delightfully quirky, Before the Coffee Gets Cold explores the intersecting lives of four women who come together in one extraordinary café, where the service may not be quick, but the opportunities are endless.
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Ooh, I’ve been tempted by the magical midlife thing before. Click!
I’m not a fan of the current trend of midlife paranormal women’s fiction. It comes across as mean spirited (a lot of the characters seem to have it in for the MC) and there’s constant jokes about the character being old! She’s forty but it reads like she’s way older than that. I tried to read magical midlife madness but found it frustrating to read.
Magical Midlife Madness was for a while constantly on my sponsored Kindle cover – that alone made me want to not buy it. What did the publisher pay for to have it pushed like that?
@Kit, yikes – sounds terrible. One more reason for me not to buy it! I passed 40 a couple of years ago and I certainly do not feel like that. And I would feel offended if I was reading that book!
I tried Magical Midlife Madness, but felt the author was working too hard to be funny, ironic or something, and all I felt was sad. Maybe it got better, but I didn’t buy into any of it.
Wild Women and the Blues, otoh, sounds like a great story. Will have to check it out.
Irked by midlife female stereotypes? Wonder if you’ve noticed how often authors reach for comic relief with older women. They dress too loudly and make embarrassing advances toward younger men. Wacky grandmas always good for a hoot.
@Mzcue, did that comic relief start with Grandma Mazur in the Stephanie Plum series? I do not remember coming across this type of character in earlier reading from any genre.
@Kit: Wait—the “old” female character is 40?? 40!! I had twins when I was 40 (almost 41). You’d think the writer would have consulted some demographic studies before deciding to make a 40-year-old a figure of fun because she’s OLD. On the other hand, I don’t like women of any age being made fun of because of their age, so there’s that. Obviously, the book is not for me.
@LML: Although I always liked Ruthie Knox, she did write one series with a grandmother who was supposedly a “feminist who had marched during the sixties,” but all the grandma did was make really objectifying comments about her granddaughters’ boyfriends (in their presence too) and call them “Sweet Cheeks.” This was presented as amusing because she was an old lady! Yes, I enjoy my alternate-universe reverse-harem of cover models, but I hope I’m never so lost to conduct that I make droolingly icky remarks to my daughters’ boyfriends. Ugh!
@LML The Stephanie Plum grandma is certainly an archetype of the caricature I’m talking about. The one that hit me between the eyes came from a once beloved author of small town romances. She contrived a comedy chorus of seniors who popped in and out of scenes in their retirement village van. What broke my heart was when the main male characters expressed their fear and disgust at the sex crazed little old ladies. You really don’t have to look hard to find them. Sometimes they are neighbor ladies that the main characters warn one another to look out for. Sometimes they are aunties from the old country. It’s discouragingly common.
If 40 is old…I’m posting from beyond the grave at 60…also The Secret Life of Miss Anna Marsh…meh
I’d actually love to read about a paranormal novel with a women over forty in it but please, can the MC be a little more proactive? They spend the whole novel being pushed around and almost inevitably get dumped by their husband of twenty plus years for a younger model and they just accept it without a hint of anger. Then they move back to their parents (who are exactly the eccentric and tactless stereotype yawn) or get treated like crap by their grown up children. Can we please have a forty plus heroine kicking butt like the twenty somethings? (They can moan about their knees after slaying the demons though I’ll give them that!)
@Kit: “Can we please have a forty plus heroine kicking butt like the twenty somethings? (They can moan about their knees after slaying the demons though I’ll give them that!)” YES PLEASE! I’d love to buy that.
I have high hopes for the Mercy Thompson series by P.Briggs — I’d love to see her and Adam grow old together.
@Kit Maybe this? Becoming Crone by Lydia M. Hawke – from the blurb on Amazon: She wanted purpose. She got dark magic and war.
Claire Emerson is adrift. After a lifetime as a wife, mother, and grandma, she never saw divorce or loneliness coming and is desperate for some sense of purpose. But when her sixtieth birthday brings a snarky gargoyle, an annoyingly sexy wolf shifter, and an unknown magical calling, she thinks she’s losing the only thing she has left: her sanity.
I read about this title, probably here at SBTB, and reaaallly wanted to read it but it wasn’t available at any of my libraries. But it is now 😀 And it’s 99 cents at kindle.
I read at least one of the midlife magic type thingies – and also was not impressed. I find that the antidote is reading almost anything by Shelley Laurenston, but especially the honey badger series. Humour, women’s rage, strong friendships and family bonds, kindness, and over-the-top ass-kicking at competence porn levels. It’s great fantasy therapy for dealing with real life crap caused by the incompetent and the cruel.
The topic of older heroines has definitely come up before but my search skills are not finding the comment threads.
The SBTB Book Finder returns 32 results for “older couple” – https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/bookfinder-results/
For fantasy / sci-fi recs, this post on tor.com has over 100 comments – https://www.tor.com/2013/01/29/sleeps-with-monsters-where-are-the-older-women/
@DiscoDollyDeb, Today is the 25th birthday for my youngest of 5, born when I was 41. You can do the math for my age. Ancient by romance book standards. I’m not a grandmother,but maybe I should start calling my daughters’ boyfriends/girlfriends “sweet cheeks?” Maybe not. My daily uniform is jeans and tshirts, or whatever weather appropriate shirt I own. I may have some aches and pains, but I’m about to leave for my 3 hour volunteer job working with horses at a riding therapy center and leading them for lessons for disabled riders. A lot of our volunteers are over 50. I wish the world would catch up and realize how productive people over 50 are!
I’d especially like for books, movies, social media, and TV to stop treating older adults as “cute” or “feisty,” especially when it comes to love and sex.
Wow, interesting discussion! I’m half expecting to throw ‘magical midlife’ metaphorically against the wall now! 🙂 I’m 56 and I definitely agree that women of middle age are – in romance fiction – all too often presented as red-hat-wearing elderly goofballs. 40 is barely middle-aged these days.
I clicked on the Kickass Older Woman a long time ago when I picked up the first Mrs. Pollifax book by Dorothy Gilman. The series is uneven, but I still think that first one holds up well given it was written a long time ago. (And I straight-up loved the movie with Rosalind Russell.)
For those looking for a butt-kicking heroine who is no longer twenty, may I recommend Julie Kenner’s series that starts with “Carpe Demon”. I forget the exact age of the heroine, but she has a teenage daughter. The best description is what if Buffy the Vampire Slayer comes out of her retirement as a suburban soccer mom to save the world again?
Waves @chacha1 I’m 56 too.
Just started reading Becoming Crone, five chapters in. I like the heroine and bonus points for another character’s use of French Canadian swear words (which autocorrect changed to sweet words, bwahahahaha, no). I’m going to enjoy this *way* more than I did the middle aged magic stuff.
@Escapeologist: I’ve referred to the Sleeps With Monsters post many times, which is where I found REMNANT POPULATION by Elizabeth Moon, and am listening to it now. Ofelia’s anger, when she lets it out, is sublime. Highly recommended.
@CarrieG this: “I’d especially like for books, movies, social media, and TV to stop treating older adults as “cute” or “feisty,” especially when it comes to love and sex.”
I’m almost 61 and continue to enjoy ribald and varied intimate relationships with like-minded similarly aged people.
In Romancelandia we are completely invisible.
HOWEVER the lovely romance “Roommates” features a 70 something woman who discovers the joys of physical relationships.