Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties by Camille Pagan

Maggie has been with her husband, Adam, for almost thirty years. They were college sweethearts who did the whole nine yards: marriage, two kids, a beautiful house in the suburbs and a cozy retirement pending. Then Adam comes home one day and drops a bomb into their supposedly happy life; he’s no longer in love with Maggie and wants out of their marriage. Not only did Maggie not see this coming, but she thinks it must just be a phase and tries to figure out how to get Adam back. When that proves utterly, and humiliatingly, futile, she pack her bags, first for a trip to Rome that they were supposed to take together, and then to Ann Arbor for a change of scene. Just when she is getting her life back on track, with new work possibilities and a new beau, Adam has a change of heart (attack) and wants Maggie back. Will she choose her previous, carefully planned out life, or her new and unpredictable one? This coming of (middle) age novel is full of the funny, laugh-out-loud moments I’ve come to expect from a Camille Pagan novel, with a relatable heroine who is trying to find her footing in a time of life when most people are securely planted. While I’m still a little shy of that phase of life, it was refreshing to have a (slightly) older protagonist in a women’s contemporary fiction novel.