Publishers Weekly
01/22/2024
Yablon’s delightful debut features a spunky retiree who overhauls her life after she discovers her husband in flagrante. Sixty-three-year-old Connecticut transplant Sylvia Fisher is leading an unfulfilled retirement in a Florida development for fellow retirees when she walks in on her husband, Louis, having sex with a neighbor. To make matters worse, Louis has lost all of their money in a questionable investment scheme. Sylvia first decamps to her uptight daughter Isabel’s home in Connecticut, and later convinces her best friend from the development, glamorous widow Evie, to join her in reinventing their lives in New York City. Soon, Sylvia has a job as a wedding planner and falls for the divorced father of one of the brides. Will this new man prove to be every bit as much a cad as the one she left behind? Comic relief is aptly provided by Isabel’s amorous mother-in-law, and by a Bergdorf Goodman personal shopper who shows Sylvia and Evie they can be sexy at any age. It’s impossible not to cheer for the strong heroine at the center of Yablon’s savvy story. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
Praise for Sylvia's Second Act:
“Sylvia’s story hit all of my favorite notes - laugh out loud funny, action packed and ultimately redemptive. It’s a love song to women of a certain age, and I’ll be humming it for years to come.”
—Annabel Monaghan, bestselling author of Nora Goes Off Script and Same Time Next Summer
“A gem! Every page of this book is a delight.”
—KJ Dell'Antonia, New York Times bestselling author of The Chicken Sisters
“A first-rate novel of second chances that will have you laughing right from the start. Sylvia will show you that it's never too late to reinvent yourself, especially if you have a good friend by your side and a cosmopolitan in hand.”
—Steven Rowley, New York Times bestselling author of The Celebrants
“Who doesn’t love a story about an older woman getting a second chance at love and life? Sylvia is the woman we all need in our lives right now.”
—Glamour
“Yablon’s debut is mostly gentle screwball comedy, with a bit of gravitas. . . A little sex, a lotta laughs in the city.”
—Kirkus
“[A] delightful debut. . . It’s impossible not to cheer for the strong heroine at the center of Yablon’s savvy story.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A satisfying reminder that it's never too late to start over.”
—Booklist
“Sixty-something Sylvia Fisher's life needs a make-over. She's sick of retirement life in Boca Raton AND her cheating husband. Novelist Hillary Yablon gives readers hungry for a midlife romance a fizzy, delicious story we didn't know we needed. Take a bow, Sylvia, cause readers are gonna give this laugh-out-loud female buddy story made in Manhattan a standing ovation.”
—Mary Kay Andrews, New York Times bestselling author of The Homewreckers
“I'm ready to audition real-life candidates for the Sylvia to my Evie (or the Evie to my Sylvia)... These two are living the dream and getting up to exactly the level of post-retirement fun I want to have one day. Pure delight!”
—Mary Laura Philpott, bestselling author of Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives
“This sexagenarian-in-the-city tale is brimming with warmth, energy and humour. Its irrepressible heroine implores you to never give up on friendship, never give up on love but most importantly never give up on yourself. Will put a twinkle in your eye and a spring in your step. Fabulous fun!”
—Veronica Henry, bestselling author of How to Find Love in a Bookshop
“This is the book that every woman deserves! A fun, fierce mature woman and her equally awesome best friend taking on the big city and pulling off glamorous weddings? Yes please. I am going to need an entire series about the adventures of Sylvia and Evie!”
—Jesse Q. Sutanto, author of Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murder
MAY 2024 - AudioFile
Jane Oppenheimer's resolute cadence and crisp tone create the perfect palette for debut author Hillary Yablon's heartwarming and funny later-in-life makeover story. Coming home to her Florida condo, 63-year old Sylvia finds her husband engaged in passionate gymnastics with the neighborhood floozy. This incident prompts her to leave the tiresome man--who, by the way, has lost all of their money to bad investments--and the retirement community she loathes, and bravely begin a new life in Manhattan with her glamorous widowed friend, Evie. Oppenheimer's resonant tones and commanding delivery navigate Sylvia's riotous ups and downs with panache as she reignites her defunct wedding-planning business and plunges into the dating game. Lively characters, outrageous scenarios, and a thoroughly engaging performance make this a surefire hit. S.G. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2024-01-05
Bye-bye, Florida retirement community—hello, Manhattan!
“Because I am an avid fan of Sex and the City (I’ve seen it from start to finish six times), I know that Belinda is in reverse cowgirl position.” When Sylvia walks in on her husband, Louis, with the “roving whore of Boca Beach Gables” and learns in the aftermath that he has lost all their money through a bad investment, she feels mainly relief. She finally has a good reason to leave him, which she’s wanted to do for a long time. She heads over to her friend Evie’s, who suggests they start drinking immediately and the next day puts Sylvia in an Uber to the airport. Her initial plan—to stay with her daughter, Isabel, and help with the twins—is foiled by Isabel, who has no faith in her mother’s ability to make it on her own and is determined to get her parents back together. Rather than cave in to pressure, Sylvia decides to do the one thing she “really, truly” wants: move to Manhattan and restart her wedding-planning business. Though she would also like to “remember what it’s like to enjoy sex,” there’s no marriage plot here: Sylvia’s game plan is far more Sex and the City than Golden Bachelor. She persuades Evie to fly up to join her, and the roomies plunge into city living together in an Airbnb in Harlem, with Sylvia pawning her jewelry for seed money and going for a job interview with a rival wedding planner who did her dirty long ago. Yablon’s debut is mostly gentle screwball comedy, with a bit of gravitas added by Evie’s plotline—she lost her son to a drug overdose, and his widow has cut her off from her grandchild. So along with a messy affair, a penitent husband, and an angry daughter, Sylvia’s got that to worry about, too. But for a 63-year-old lady, she’s not much of a worrier. What Yablon (who’s much younger than her protagonists) gets right is that Sylvia cares less about finding true love than about work and friendship.
A little sex, a lotta laughs in the city.
