Title: “I Used to Be Fun”

Author: Melanie Summers

Genre: Literary Fiction/Women’s Fiction

Publication Date: October 24, 2023

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)

In “I Used to Be Fun,” Jessica Holloway is feeling like so many other mom’s and women in their forties do. Underappreciated and overworked, yet still unfulfilled, and not at all where she thought she would be in the middle of her life. I found her husband and teenage children to be incredibly annoying and ungrateful, and perhaps that was the point of the way in which each was written, yet it made me question Jess as a woman and mother, that she would have raised two such spoiled children, and that she would stay married to a man who did not value her contributions to their family.

While I did find it easy to empathize and relate to many of her feelings early on in the story, I lost the ability to relate and feel sorry for her with quite a bit of the story left to be told. While it was a good reminder that you are never too old, and it is truly never too late, to pursue the life you had imagined for yourself, I found this story to be more of a tale of what not to do if you find yourself in similar circumstances, which is not at all what I was hoping it would be. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Tantor Audio for an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.