tw/cw: antifat bias, manipulation, abuse
Flirting With Fifty is a contemporary romance between Paige, who turns fifty about halfway through the book, and Jack, who is a few years older. Full disclosure: I’m the same age as Paige, and, like Paige’s daughters, I’m the adult daughter of an alcoholic father and a mom who divorced said father late in life, and my personal experiences very much colored how I perceived the book.
There’s not a lot of plot to this book. Paige is 49, divorced, with three adult daughters. She’s a mathematics professor who is popular with students. She has a comfortable life with purpose and social connection and never intends to date again.
But then she has to co-teach a class with a visiting professor, a widower from Australia named Jack. Thirty years ago they slept together and they still have sparks. Should Paige try for love again? It’s a romance, you guys, so yes, she should, although frankly this romance goes south so very dramatically towards the end of the book that I’m inclined to think that she should have just stayed at home.
This book is supposed to be romantic, but instead I found it to be an unsettling demonstration of how a lot of abusive relationships start. Paige is presented as a confident, self-sufficient woman who really has her act together, and Jack is presented as a confident, caring man who likes to encourage people to try new things. There are little hints that maybe Paige is not actually super emotionally healthy and that maybe Jack is controlling. But they were all things that I could sort of hand wave away, until all of a sudden Jack’s behavior escalated in a really upsetting fashion. At first it seemed as though his behavior came out of nowhere, but after giving it some thought I realized that all these little excuses I’d been making for the characters were hiding hints that actually this relationship was headed for serious trouble.
The tone of the first three-quarters of the book is very matter-of-fact and non-dramatic – I’d describe it as dry. Sometimes this is fine. Sometimes it’s really refreshing for me to read about mentally healthy people who have a relationship in an environment free of, say, alien invasions or explosions of any kind. However, the lack of actual events or conflict makes the book a bit dull, and as I will describe more in a bit, I didn’t actually think that the characters were as mentally healthy as they initially appeared to be. To be honest, I stuck with this book for much longer than I normally would have simply because I liked the concept of a romance involving a woman my age. Almost all of the book is written from Paige’s point of view, and she and Jack co-teach, talk about their classes, chat about their adult children, and basically do normal person things with minimal conflict.
Setting aside the pace, there are some odd and troubling things in this first three quarters. For one thing, neither Jack nor Paige have any age-related health or pain issues with the exception of Paige having a low sex drive due to menopause (her sex drive conveniently comes back once she and Jack get together). That’s not problematic, necessarily – a lot of people this age are healthy, fit, and athletic. Not me, but a lot of people! Yet I couldn’t help thinking – really? No one has a tricky knee? No one needs reading glasses? Jack doesn’t have lower back pain from all that travel? When they finally have sex, post-menopausal Paige doesn’t require some lube?
Maybe this struck me more than usual because there are also some odd nuggets of diet culture sprinkled throughout. Paige mentions being glad she is “still slender.” Paige is portrayed frequently at mealtimes, when her meals are described as things like yogurt and a banana, or chicken breast and vegetables. When she orders Greek food for herself and her daughter, she “ate almost everything, even the rice, which she normally tried not to do.” Meanwhile a reference to her adult daughter, Ashley, having a history of body dysmorphia and being “incredibly slender, exercising all the time” but still thinking of herself as a “big girl” is tossed off and then never mentioned again, despite the fact that the things mentioned amount to quite a row of red flags.
Blanche and I are both worried about Ashley, whose body image problems are never alluded to again…
I was also frustrated by how Paige processes her divorce from Ted, her alcoholic ex-husband, and how Paige treats her adult daughters, who are all vocally trying to process their feelings about Ted. Paige generally refers to Ted’s drinking as a ‘problem’, only using the word ‘alcoholic’ twice, and emphasizes that “he wasn’t always like that” and that “his drinking exacerbated his temper.” She is so determined not to be the referee between Ted and her daughters that she fails to validate their feelings and their experience by clearly naming the alcoholism and abuse as such.
I understand that boundaries are important and so is not trash-talking the father of your children in front of them. But by consistently avoiding referring to Ted as an alcoholic and an abuser, and refusing to validate the daughters’ feelings of abuse and abandonment, Paige is leaving them to process their feelings with no support or guidance. Here’s an especially frustrating passage, when Ashley is hurt that her father only wants to see her when it is especially convenient for him.
“Dad’s not a happy person,” Paige said, wanting to smooth things over.
“If that’s truly the case, he should do something about it. Like take a hard look at himself. Maybe go to an AA meeting. Ask his family why no one wants a relationship with him.”
Paige gave her a look. “That’s a little harsh.”
“It’s the truth, and you know it.”
Paige didn’t say anything, uncomfortable with the past.
Ashley’s chin lifted. “Dad always took out his frustrations on us. He was always in a bad mood and he hated that we were happy. It wasn’t okay. And it wasn’t okay that he blamed you-”
“You’re right,” Paige interrupted, in part because Ashley was right, but also because Paige didn’t want to do this now. She hated making excuses for Ted. She’d spent years making excuses for her ex-husband, and yet at the same time she didn’t want to live in the past, didn’t want to examine it over and over. The past was the past. She needed to move forward. She wanted to move forward.
Jesus Wept!
Paige, if you don’t want to make excuses, STOP MAKING THEM. Stop saying that it’s “harsh” to suggest that an alcoholic go to AA and that a man estranged from his children take an honest look at his life to see how that might have happened! Paige isn’t moving forward; she’s trapped in an eternal world of “not examining it” and not talking about it, especially not talking about it to the daughters who lived it with her. This is not healthy behavior! This is not boundary setting! It’s denial and just a massive shutting down of a person (in this case, Ashley) who is coming to Paige for support. Interrupting with a brusque “You’re right” and change of subject is not helpful to either of them!
Ashley, the youngest daughter, gets a lot of story time because she wants to move in with Paige and live rent free. Paige fails to give Ashley the validation she needs with regard to her father but also fails to give her some much needed tough love. Her other daughters also seem to have problems that I never fully understood because they weren’t fully explored in the text.
Why does Paige encourage her daughter Nicole to stay with a man who is clearly misogynistic and toxic, a man who threatened to leave Nicole because she is getting promoted faster than he is?
What is Paige’s problem with her third daughter’s boyfriend?
I was so frustrated by this! It seemed as though huge chunks of story were left out, and Paige either encouraged or passively ignored major issues in herself and her kids.
I’ve been talking a lot about Paige because most of the book is from her point of view, but Jack has issues too. On one level he’s just dreamy. He’s a scientist who makes a lot of money (he has a science show on TV) and who is adored by students but not in a creepy way. His adult son adores him. He’s a widower (no pesky ex-wife to deal with!). He’s interesting but doesn’t just talk about himself. But I always felt a little uncomfortable about the fact that in the relationship between himself and Paige, he is the one who takes the lead on everything – not by violating consent, as he’s very respectful, but definitely pushing Paige to travel more and to take chances romantically and in other parts of her life.
I’d be fine with this except that Paige doesn’t seem to challenge or change or strengthen or balance Jack’s life at all. A good relationship should involve both people helping each other be the best versions of themselves. I don’t mean that people should enter relationships with the goal of changing one another – that way lies disaster. I just mean that the best relationships are ones in which our partners balance us and enrich us and have a happy and healthy influence on our lives. Near the end of the book Jack says that Paige has “changed him,” but his list of ways in which she has done so is limited to the things he likes about her, not ways in which she helps him grow or ways in which she balances him.
It’s even creepier that Jack is constantly bringing up the fact that when he and Paige had a one night stand thirty years ago, she faked her orgasm. It’s presented humorously, but it seemed to me that, despite his willingness to take the relationship slowly, he was at least partially interested in Paige only because he wanted to prove to himself that he can sexually satisfy her for the sake of his ego. Here’s an example of one of several conversations in which this comes up:
“Whether I did, or didn’t, have an o is none of your concern. And for you to remember that all these years later -”
“You don’t remember? Has it truly slipped your mind?”
“Again, none of your business,” she said, primly.
“I have spent thirty years aware that I left you unsatisfied. I think that makes it my business.”
To sum up: The first two-thirds of the book are mostly dull but dotted with weird issues and serious problems that are abandoned in ways that made me increasingly uncomfortable. They were all presented in ways that caused me to doubt myself for being uncomfortable.
And then we get to the final portion of the book, in which Paige and Jack take their university students on a study trip to Tanzania.
Dear lord, give me strength.
These students are perfect in every way. No one misses a deadline, no one has a screaming fight with their boyfriend on the plane, no one forgets their shots. At the airport, the students all line up with their passports out and ready. I have never ever in my life seen a line of human beings, student or otherwise, with their documents all out like they are supposed to be.
At one point on the trip, the students go on safari for three days as an official part of the university trip but with no university staff, something I cannot imagine actually happening, not because the students aren’t adults but because it’s a university trip, not a vacation, and staff would be expected to be part of that! The liability issues alone make my head hurt! One of the two staff members, Paige (the other one being Jack) goes on a separate safari for three days because she “doesn’t want to go camping with the students” with her phone on airplane mode! Come on, Paige, that lawsuit writes itself!
Jack then proceeds to create a completely moronic conflict out of nowhere. He knows an old flame will be at the conference during the time that he will also be there, and while Paige will be away from the main conference on safari. He doesn’t tell Paige that his ex will be present even though he knows she feels threatened by this ex.
His reasoning for this is, “I thought you’d panic, assume the worst-”
What a patronizing, controlling, lying ass.
Paige dumps him and he freaks out:
“It’s over.”
“Bullshit. You don’t get to decide,” he ground the words out.
WHOOAAAAA. NOT COOL DUDE.
Jack then proceeds to stalk and gaslight her by:
- Telling her she can’t leave him over a misunderstanding (credit to Paige for pointing out that there is no misunderstanding, just a big old deliberate deception).
- Telling her that she won’t break up with him over his lying to her face because she’s “not that fragile”.
- Showing up uninvited to the safari that she is on.
- Insisting on sitting by “his girlfriend”.
- Telling her that if she makes a scene she’ll ruin the day for other people.
- Telling everyone that she is his fiancée.
- Laughing in her face when she expresses her displeasure.
Instead of kicking him in the balls and getting a restraining order, Paige falls into his arms and they vow eternal love, etc.
I had hoped that Flirting With Fifty would be an age-positive romance. Instead, a slow creeping of minor but unsettling hints, elements, and plot lines exploded at the end into a full-on horror show of toxic masculinity and controlling, emotionally abusive behavior. I was so disappointed, you guys. I can’t recommend this book to anyone of any age. So much of the toxic behavior from both Paige and Jack is presented as healthy and romantic.
Honestly, if this book was presented as a horrifying story of how a relationship can proceed from pretty normal to emotionally abusive by means of a gradually increasing series of manipulative violations of boundaries, it would be a winner. But this is a romance, and I am supposed to believe in the HEA of two people who have neither resolved their own issues nor their issues with each other. I went from being bored, to being uneasy, to being appalled in the course of the book. Give me older characters, but not these ones, please!
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Thanks!
I love a good rant review. This book does sound terrible though. I will avoid it!
I often wonder when I read reviews like this – did the author think this is a *good* idea? Like, they wrote this out and went “yes, this is cute and romantic and acceptable” and submitted it to (presumably) an editor who thought “sure, let’s put this in the romance section and not the gothic horror where it obviously belongs”.
HOW?
Anyway, thanks. Sometimes I read reviews to know what not to read.
@Glaucke—there are some authors where I’m like, “Oof. What happened in your life to make you think that type of behavior was okay let alone romantic??” (List includes Elizabeth Hoyt, Tessa Bailey, some of Sarah MacLean, and whatever is up with Courtney Milan’s sibling relationships.)
Also, this part made my skin crawl:
“Dad’s not a happy person,” Paige said, wanting to smooth things over.
“If that’s truly the case, he should do something about it. Like take a hard look at himself. Maybe go to an AA meeting. Ask his family why no one wants a relationship with him.”
Paige gave her a look. “That’s a little harsh.”
No, it is not harsh! Taking a look in the mirror, figuring out what you did wrong, and figuring out how to make amends is a *baseline level of expectation* for this. Good gravy.
A frequent problem with “swearing off men” books is that the author is clearly unable to imagine anyone might actually MEAN it and proceeds to tell a story about a woman so desperate to be in a relationship, she’ll settle for the first piece of trash dropped in her path.
Forty-eight here, very much over the trials presented by men available to me, and very much not alone in that sentiment. In the extremely unlikely event my reaction to a Jack was anything other than “And here’s Exhibit 298-982M reinforcing my excellent decision to remain single,” the Coven in the Woods crew would immediately stage an intervention, with snacks and a professionally produced Red Flags Retrospective. Changing your mind is always an option, but you do that for people who make a believable case that they’ll transcend Mt. Bad Experience, not people who show you from the start they’ll give it more mass.
But if you write that story as though you take the resistance seriously, the hero has to genuinely subvert all of the heroine’s negative expectations AND she has to be extraordinary in some way to justify his willingness to put work into proving himself to her rather than picking a woman from the throng surrounding him with their hands out, pleading “Please, sir, I want to believe and will instantly reward any shred of decency,” and that’s a whole other kind of work than “any man will cure any woman’s empty existence.”
Relevant to other recent (and perennial) romance discourse, I’m thinking, if ever there was a book that needed to “subvert romance norms” and not end with a HEA, this is it. Or, alternatively, could we call this a book with a HEA that’s nevertheless not a romance? I feel like you took one for the team reading this. And it is a shame because I am approaching the half century mark and also would love more books with MCs my age. But not like this.
Also, who remembers sex with someone that happened 30 years ago??? I probably wouldn’t even remember the guy’s name, let alone any details. I think it’s weird when authors take stuff like that and then turn it into a plot point. It just seems so forced. Probably minor relative to all the other truly problematic things going on in this book.
@Squee_me good point. If it had been written as a women’s fiction with the MC realising she needed to end the relationship and come to terms with her past it may have been readable.
Thank you Carrie for enduring what I will not have to endure now! It seems like the author was snoozing through the last decade or so maybe? I think a good few hours on the am I the asshole (AITA) subreddit would create a necessary reality shift.
@Lena/Ren – can I join the Coven in the Woods?
I’m 56 and there’s nothing about that book’s scenario with which I can identify. Well, sexual fling with a co-worker, sure. All the rest of it? GET THERAPY, GIRL.
Maybe they belong together, since they both sound toxic AF. yeesh.
Please try L.B. Dunbar for older romance, most of hers are in their 40s, and they are fantastic.
An alternative book with a 48 year-old female MC is Gudrun Frerichs’s THE UNTAMED HEART (“purchased” free on Tuesday of this week and read last night). The MC is the third generation owner and manager of a traveling circus (with NO exotic animals) in NZ, whose four grown children work in the circus. I’d give the book a B+ (the reason it wasn’t an A is totally a spoiler) but it seems to have avoided *all* the issues outlined in this excellent RANT. Forty-eight (and even 50) is younger than a couple of my beloved [step] kids and barely older than my [non-step] kids. THE UNTAMED HEART was excellent at showing both the youth of this 48 year-old, ex-trapeze artist and her journey to wisdom through incredible trials and responsibilities. FLIRTING WITH 50 sounds horrible; this might be a decent alternative.
There was a strand of Mills & Boon books in the seventies and eighties (IIRC) in which the hero would be a smirking, overbearing slimeball who took it as a challenge when the heroine told him to back off, treating her opinions as though they didn’t matter and forcing his attentions on her.
I hoped this had died a well-deserved death, and am disappointed to find that it has reappeared, like romance novel herpes.
Porter draws a direct line between Jack’s deception and the “problematic” behavior of Paige’s ex and that never even gets addressed in the half-assed reconciliation. What’s the point of narrative again?
Not to throw a red herring in here, but I also found Paige’s initial obsession/jealousy over Camille a little odd and red-flaggy in its own way. But since she had expressed her concerns over this one specific past relationship, his deliberate decision to keep information from Paige because he thought the two women’s paths would never intersect at the conference so he wouldn’t have to deal with her feelings on the subject speaks volumes for their future together.
As the daughter of an alcoholic whose spouse didn’t divorce them but since their death wants us just to have nice memories, I will avoid this book. Thanks for the excellent review and the warning.
Okay, @Qualisign. The book you mentioned sounds really good, it is reasonably priced at $4.00 and part of KU so I have it queued up to read. Thank you!
I’ve been thinking about this all day and had to come back to add another comment. I’m so mad this book sounds so problematic because Australian science professor plus older MCs would otherwise be such serious catnip for me. Someone rewrite this and do it right!
Yikes on top of yikes! Thanks for taking the time to write this thoughtful critique, Carrie. I hope your next read was infinitely better.
I know that romances have HEAs but sometimes I think they need ‘chose your own adventure endings’. A pleasant surprise was reading a ebook edition of a romance I had somewhat enjoyed, to find a totally new ending where the heroine thought about the hero and decided to have a fulfilling life without him instead. I was cheering by the time I read the end.
Ok I have no idea why, but I’m seriously stuck on wondering why the hell a math professor is taking students on a study trip (or even co-teaching a class in the first place).
What math stuff are they studying in Tanzania that can’t be studied anywhere else?
Anyway this book sounds vastly annoying (speaking as a 45 year old who is likely the target demographic), so thanks to Carrie S. for taking one one for the team here.
@Janette: ” to find a totally new ending where the heroine thought about the hero and decided to have a fulfilling life without him instead”
Please tell me which author/title – that’s totally my catnip!
I’m sometimes rewriting the ending (in my mind – I’m too lazy to actually write much) of romances with particularly annoying aĺpha-heroes, because I can’t find enough books where the author writes that kind of ending.
I’m also a daughter of an alcoholic father who never got sober. It took/is taking me years to address the fact that no one in my family ever was able to acknowledge that my father had a serious problem. No one would discuss it or name it. It was unacknowledged yet affected our lives tremendously. It has caused me to constantly question my own judgment and experiences and to give others’ opinions more credence than my own. It was such a mind fuck. So a huge NOPE for this one.
I almost feel as if this book was written/published in response to some sort of corporate brainstorming session where one participant noted that many older female readers feel as if they are not represented in romance novels and someone else asked if there was something they could workshop from the slush pile. There seems to be a self-congratulatory air about having a heroine who is (gasp!) 50 and so not as much effort went into making her or the supporting characters strong or consistent.
Oooops! I didn’t notice that the author was Jane Porter. She’s a stalwart in the Harlequin Presents universe, so obviously her book wasn’t in the slush pile. However, what works in the HP world (especially the imported-directly-from-1970s-gothics heroes) doesn’t necessarily translate into contemporary romances.
@Qualisign I went and added ‘The Untamed Heart’ to my wishlist because a lot about it sounds intriguing. I’ve been reading mostly M/M for a few years and keep trying to dip toes back into F/M and keep finding BS toxic manipulative relationships that make me want to scream, so … there have to be SOME out there I can tolerate. 🙂
If I may be forgiven a skosh of self-rec, my novella ‘Mating Dance’ concerns a 46-yr-old dance instructor/divorcee and a 30-yr-old dancer/paralegal. Author name Alexandra Caluen. 🙂
Empress of Blandings: Your comment reminds me of what Hilary Wilde said in the 60s: “The odd thing is that if I met one of my heroes, I would probably bash him over the head with an empty whisky bottle. It is a type I loathe and detest. I imagine in all women, deep down inside us, is a primitive desire to be arrogantly bullied.”
I wanna be clear that I’m not quoting this as any sort of value judgement on people who like her books. It’s just interesting to see how values in romance novels change over time, and how different people’s desired fantasies can be from what they actually want from life. (See also: every single kid who fantasized about superheroes while knowing fully well how painful, physically and mentally, like as a superhero tends to be both in comics and movies.)
A new Rant? Oh boy! *reads* Oh, ew.
I agree with @DiscoDollyDeb, this sounds a touch corporate–“just slap ‘Older Woman Romance’ on it, it’ll sell!” Especially the weird things like “no one has a trick knee” and “she was still slender” and “they perfectly remember hooking up once 30 years ago” that sound like they didn’t actually bother to make the character realistically almost-50 any more than they bothered to make realistic college students on their trip. Seriously, they didn’t even have a serious relationship 30 years ago that they’re still hung up on? They slept together once, that’s it?
That Hilary Wilde quote makes me side-eye hard. I know it’s from the 1960’s, but nothing ticks me off like someone assuming their fantasy is actually “everyone’s” fantasy, doubly so when it’s a way of demeaning someone but claiming they “secretly like it;” I personally think the ghosts of that still haunt the Romance genre to this day.
In this case, the hero sounds like a pushy jerk, and if that’s the author’s fantasy it’s my exact turn-off. Make him learn to behave like an emotionally secure adult (hey look at that, character development for the love interest!) or get him out of my face.
Paige dumps him and he freaks out:
“It’s over.”
“Bullshit. You don’t get to decide,” he ground the words out.
“I don’t take no for an answer” is not a positive trait, authors. It’s not “I love you too much to let you go” it’s “I’m controlling and you’re an object.”
With the main character’s own hangups around her ex-husband and how her kids are trying to deal, there was more than enough room for a story about her learning what a stable and loving relationship looks like, or realizing her new relationship is mirroring her past in negative ways and course-correcting from there, or like others said, dropping the ‘Romance’ and going for ‘Women’s Fiction’ for a journey of self-discovery with or without ending up in a relationship.
What a shame, I really do think there’s a market for older/divorced romance hero/ines, and not just for novelty but for the actual differences in life experience from the 20-something crowd of hero/ines whose only “serious” past relationships were in high school…
Whew, this is a satisfying rant. I want older heroes and heroines in romance, but not books like this.
I will avoid this, thank you!
When I took students abroad, my main goal was that they come home alive.