Title: My Ex-Life
Author: Stephen McCauley
Genre: Realistic Fiction/Contemporary
Pages: 324 (Paperback)
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication date: May 8th, 2018
Synopsis from My Ex-Life's Goodreads page
David Hedges’s life is coming apart at the seams. His job helping San Francisco rich kids get into the colleges of their (parents’) choice is exasperating; his younger boyfriend has left him; and the beloved carriage house he rents is being sold. His solace is a Thai takeout joint that delivers 24/7.
The last person he expects to hear from is Julie Fiske. It’s been decades since they’ve spoken, and he’s relieved to hear she’s recovered from her brief, misguided first marriage. To him.
Julie definitely doesn’t have a problem with marijuana (she’s given it up completely, so it doesn’t matter if she gets stoned almost daily) and the Airbnb she’s running out of her seaside house north of Boston is neither shabby nor illegal. And she has two whole months to come up with the money to buy said house from her second husband before their divorce is finalized. She’d just like David’s help organizing college plans for her 17-year-old daughter.
That would be Mandy. To quote Barry Manilow, Oh Mandy. While she knows she’s smarter than most of the kids in her school, she can’t figure out why she’s making so many incredibly dumb and increasingly dangerous choices.
When David flies east, they find themselves living under the same roof (one David needs to repair). David and Julie pick up exactly where they left off thirty years ago―they’re still best friends who can finish each other’s sentences. But there’s one broken bit between them that no amount of home renovations will fix.
Synopsis from My Ex-Life's Goodreads page
David Hedges’s life is coming apart at the seams. His job helping San Francisco rich kids get into the colleges of their (parents’) choice is exasperating; his younger boyfriend has left him; and the beloved carriage house he rents is being sold. His solace is a Thai takeout joint that delivers 24/7.
The last person he expects to hear from is Julie Fiske. It’s been decades since they’ve spoken, and he’s relieved to hear she’s recovered from her brief, misguided first marriage. To him.
Julie definitely doesn’t have a problem with marijuana (she’s given it up completely, so it doesn’t matter if she gets stoned almost daily) and the Airbnb she’s running out of her seaside house north of Boston is neither shabby nor illegal. And she has two whole months to come up with the money to buy said house from her second husband before their divorce is finalized. She’d just like David’s help organizing college plans for her 17-year-old daughter.
That would be Mandy. To quote Barry Manilow, Oh Mandy. While she knows she’s smarter than most of the kids in her school, she can’t figure out why she’s making so many incredibly dumb and increasingly dangerous choices.
When David flies east, they find themselves living under the same roof (one David needs to repair). David and Julie pick up exactly where they left off thirty years ago―they’re still best friends who can finish each other’s sentences. But there’s one broken bit between them that no amount of home renovations will fix.
THOUGHTS
I received an ARC of this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review - Thank you Raincoast Books!
Reading the synopsis of this book, I was super excited to get into it. The idea seemed extremely interesting, and it seemed like it would be a fast, funny read.
When I started reading it, I immediately both loved it and had some issues with it. I loved Julie, and I loved the relationship she had with David. I loved being able to see an adult man and woman be in love with being friends with each other, but not IN love with each other. I find that finding relationships like theirs are rarely ever seen in adult contemporary books anymore.
The two of them are also absolutely hilarious together, they both had a lot of really funny and enjoyable one-liners, and I found myself laughing at some of their memories and the inside jokes they shared together.
With the amount that I loved them, there were also some things that I didn't enjoy about this book. I feel like the two of them never really were able to grow, as people and as friends. I found them to be stuck in one place, and I feel like they were both the same people at the end of the book as they were at the beginning.
I also wasn't a huge fan of their daughter. Some of her choices were very bad decisions, and I didn't like how she knew that they weren't the right decision to make, and yet still did them any way, and she really had to face the consequences. I didn't like how broken she was at the end of the book, and it really broke my heart to see how she was such a strong, independent girl at the beginning and how she was so broken and sad at the end of the book.
The writing of the book was very well done, and I did really enjoy the setting of the book, however I found the characters to be saddening and I wasn't expecting this book to be as sad as it actually was!
Overall - ★★☆☆☆.5
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