An easy, funny, affirming read. ( )

Boo hoo, the author is now over 40 and guys are no longer falling at her feet (she's married with kids, and judging from pictures, still looks pretty good). Having never been hot, I couldn't relate. She had an annoying way of generalizing about her fellow "Formerly" women. I have not read the author's blog, and maybe this would be more amusing in small doses. ( )

I won this book in the Library Thing Giveaway several months ago and I started reading it the day after I received it. I am just now posting my review and I'm only on page 73. It's taken me that long to try and finish this book. I'm finally throwing in the towel and pronouncing my efforts to complete it over. There seems to be a new crop of authors who think that turning their blog into a book is a good idea. Not so. I've yet to find one that holds my attention past the halfway mark. This book is no exception. Also, I didn't find the premise all that intersting in the execution. My woman complains about EVERYTHING and ties it back to how she is aging and used to be hot. My overall reaction to the book was an underwhelming myeh. ( )

I'm you are no longer young but not quite middle aged, this is a book for you. Based on Dolgoff's blog, she termed the phrase "formerly hot" for women just beginning to deal with aging and the myriad of problems/challenges that come with it. And, this book is not just about beauty but careers, having children later in life, finally finding one partner, etc. Though I am not in the target audience for this book, I appreciated the insight into what a woman may eventually experience as she gets older. Having learned this information, I feel that I may be better able to handle it? And that, for a twenty-something was worth the time it took to read the book! ( )

I am likely the target audience for Dolgoff's memoir/self-help/humor book on getting older. That said, I found it difficult to relate to this book. Dolgoff's inspiration for this book was discovering that people no longer saw her as a young, hot, pick-up-able woman. Instead, she's trying to come to terms with the fact that she's become an average, perhaps boring, mom. Dolgoff's complaints about aging will likely sound familiar to most. Her metabolism has slowed, she can't stay out all night anymore, men no longer try to pick her up on the subway.

The purpose of this book is to let readers know that perhaps it's not all so bad. There are benefits to getting older. The problem is that I'm not sure that Dolgoff is actually convinced that it's going to be okay. It seemed as though the author was caught between feeling she had to present a silver lining and wanting to let her readers know that the cloud actually sucks. I also felt like I couldn't relate to many of Dolgoff's concerns. My friends and I don't have so many difficulties meeting for dinner, and we don't really care if the places we go are considered hot by everyone else. Maybe the issue is that I don't live in Manhattan. Maybe it's that I don't work in fashion.

Ultimately this struck me as a book that doesn't know what it wants to be. It's not funny enough to be a work of humor. It's not deep enough to be a memoir. This seems to be a problem that a number of blogs-to-books face. Some of the material in the book would be interesting and charming as a 1-2 page magazine article, but a 200-page book is overkill. It was difficult for me to get through this book, and I didn't feel like I left it with any additional insight. ( )