Flirting with Fifty by Jane Porter
ARC provided by Berkley via Net Galley. Releases 5/24/22.Ā
āShe didnāt need a man telling her what to do, or where to be, or what time to be home. She didnāt want to ask for permission to meet friends, see a movie, or take a barre class. She was turning fifty at the end of September, and she was done asking. Done getting permission for anything. Done compromising. And relationships were just one compromise after another. āI donāt hate men. I just donāt need to spend a lot of one-on-one time with any of them.ā
Paige is content with her life. She loves her job as a math professor and her three grown daughters have their own satisfying lives. She has been out of her terrible marriage for eight years and has no desire to get back into the relationship game. (Being divorced in my fifties, I can so relate!)
When Paige gets recruited to co-teach a class with a visiting professor, she is not happy about the added work. Then she realizes that the professor is the same sexy Aussie she hooked up with thirty years ago, and not knowing what to do, she pretends to not know him. Of course he remembers herā¦.
Jack is an Indiana Jones type of guy who travels the world doing field study. He is a widower with a grown son. The biology course they are co-teaching also includes a 3-week field study, so I enjoyed the different settings the book takes us to. But it was a little slow for me.
It was a slow-burn romance, which works for the age of the characters, as well as the workplace situation, but it just made the book itself a little slow as well. There wasnāt really any important conflict or anything overly exciting that made me want to rush to read and find out what happens.
Likes:
- Older, smart characters.
- Parents of grown kids.
- I liked getting to go to Tanzania.
- It was different than most books I read.
- I loved Jack.
- There was none of the stereotypical middle aged characterizations.
- They mentioned the Pandemic instead of pretending it didn’t happen.
Dislikes:
- It moved a little slow for me.
- Needed some more of a conflict.
- Not a fan of the cover.
- She had a kind of strange relationship with her grown daughters.
- I felt very ambivalent towards Paige. I didnāt love her or hate her.
The Down & Dirty:
Rating: 3.5 Stars, 2.5 Heat

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