Thursday, July 7, 2016

How To Be A Grown-Up and GIVEAWAY!

I am so, so excited to be able to not only read this book but offer a giveaway to one of my readers! I've been eyeing this one up for awhile because I've heard good things about it and then on Facebook, one of the authors, Nicola Kraus, asked if there were any bloggers who wanted to review and I'm like YES, ABSOLUTELY, PICK ME RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I AM POOR.

It's OK, I didn't embarrass you all and actually say that but I was super eager and yay it came and then I read it in a night because IT'S SO GOOD.

How To Be A Grown-Up- Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus
From bestselling authors Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus comes a timely novel about a forty-something wife and mother thrust back into the workforce, where she finds herself at the mercy of a boss half her age.

Rory McGovern is entering the ostensible prime of her life when her husband, Blake, loses his dream job and announces he feels like taking a break from being a husband and father. Rory was already spread thin and now, without warning, she is single-parenting two kids, juggling their science projects, flu season, and pajama days, while coming to terms with her disintegrating marriage. And without Blake, her only hope is to accept a full-time position working for two full-time twenty-somethings.

A day out of b-school, these girls think they know it all and have been given the millions from venture capitalists to back up their delusion that the future of digital media is a high-end lifestyle site for kids! (Not that anyone who works there has any, or knows the first thing about actual children.) Can Rory learn to decipher her bosses lingo, texts that read like license plates, and arbitrary mandates? And is there any hope of saving her marriage? With her family hanging by a thread, Rory must adapt to this hyper-digitized, over-glamorized, narcissistic world of millennials whatever it takes.

Since their diabolically funny (The New York Times, on The Nanny Diaries) debut, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus have proven their ability to illuminate provocative issues with wry wit and heartfelt emotion. How to Be a Grown-up is an entertaining and insightful story sure to resonate with all those readers who first fell in love with The Nanny Diaries.

First, I have to tell you how much I related to this book. I feel like I am the super un-cool version of Rory. Rory is a mom to two kids, she's married, she's working, and she's in a bit of a rut. When her husband, Blake, finds himself unemployed it throws the family into a spin. Well, mostly just Rory because as with so many moms, she's basically the one holding the ship together all of the time and while Blake is focusing on what this means for HIM, it's Rory and her practical mind wondering how bills will get paid, what their financial future in general holds, and she needs him to sit down and figure this out with her. 

Except that he won't. In fact, his solution is for them to separate, leaving Rory holding the bills, house, children, and now her full time job at Jeunebug, a children's lifestyle website, all on her own. The problem with her new job is that it's almost immediately glaringly obvious that Rory is old. She's not the cool, hip mom. She's not the cool, hip twenty-something and her bosses are literally teenagers with a vision who speak a foreign language of lingo that Rory finds herself looking up on Wikipedia because she literally has no idea what they are talking about. 

So while her marriage is imploding, she's struggling with adapting to single mom status, and her job is a total challenge... she meets Josh. And Josh is everything that Blake is not, which is not at all the type Rory would have gone for back in the day when she was looking for a husband, but given the state of her marriage, she isn't sure she even knows what's best for herself anymore. 

Now, after I finished the book I had already ordered one for my friend who I know would absolutely, 100% get it and relate to it like I did. Then I read reviews and people are... people are dumb. I'm not the naive 20something I once was who freaked out over the first sign of trouble in my marriage because I've since learned that we ALL have these moments, it's just some of us are in denial and some pretend it doesn't happen because you're really something if you can pull off the perfect marriage. There is a part, fairly early on in the book, where Blake and Rory decide to give marriage counseling a try. She's looking at it like a very practical next step and he's looking at it like he's not sure if it can help but honestly how much worse can things be? 

Well. 

They pick easily the WORST counselor ever who says, "Couples therapy is traditionally a gateway drug to divorce. Why? Because people pay hundreds of dollars to have these polite useless conversations. Then they go home where I can't help them and tear each other apart. So in my process we dive into the blame." And that's when Rory finds out what Blake really thinks of her, she's judgmental and controlling. She gets rightfully upset, but for Blake's defense, Rory really isn't listening to what Blake needs, and neither one of them are able to understand and accept their shortcomings in the marriage. 

And holy moly can I absolutely, 100% relate. It's really rough to sit in that chair and listen to the person who said they love you rattle off a list of reasons why you aren't doing it for them anymore. And then you are supposed to take that criticism constructively and figure out how to turn the ship around without being angry and resentful. 

I'm just saying the real badass marriages you should be looking up to are the ones who have come out of marriage counseling and made it. Just saying. 

Anyways. 

This book is SO great. I absolutely loved it because I can relate to it and for everyone who says this is just a lame attempt at being funny, I beg to differ. I've been through it and my girl Rory and I? Twinsies. It's like I could have written this myself, except my story has a different ending than hers. 

Lucky for you, I have one copy of How To Be A Grown-Up to giveaway to one lucky reader! (US/Canada only). You should absolutely enter because my giveaways are almost always low entries so you have a huge chance of winning! If you are a total grump and don't want to enter, you can head over to Amazon and buy your own copy and get it right away. Good luck, lambs! 


5 comments:

traveler said...

Be confident and do not worry yourself sick, since it is pointless. saubleb(at)gmail(dot)com

Jennifer said...

I would try much harder to not be so serious!

Unknown said...

Start developing healthy habits when you're young. It will be much easier to maintain a healthy routine than starting from scratch as an adult.

Steff said...

Stop caring about everything so much! Pick a few things I'm passionate about and focus on that.

Stacy said...

I'd tell myself to be more inquisitive.