If you spend enough time on BookTok or looking at the latest best-seller lists, you may start to wonder—is reading only for the young? Most of the biggest book influencers are in their 20s—and it stands to reason they’re interested in reading about protagonists their own age falling in love, slaying dragons, and solving murders. But don’t let BookTok fool you. Recent research suggests that 75% of active readers are actually 45 and older.
As someone in my 40s, I was interested in reading about women in the messy middle of life. It’s one of the reasons I wrote my novel Jane and Dan at the End of the World. There are so many love stories about the beginning of relationships— twenty-somethings falling in love and living happily ever after. But what happens next? Long-term relationships are rarely easy or picture-perfect and I wanted to explore what it means to find yourself next to someone fifteen or twenty years in, when there are kids and a mortgage and orthodontist bills and mountains of laundry and you wake up and wonder—whose life is this?
This reading list features protagonists over the age of 40—women navigating the complexities of middle life with all its triumphs, heartbreaks, and reinventions. These stories of women rediscovering themselves or chasing long-forgotten dreams prove that life’s adventures don’t end at 35.
All Fours by Miranda July
Coming of age books aren’t always about teenagers. A 45-year-old artist embarks on a solo cross-country trip, but finds herself stopping in a small town and having an affair in a cheap motel—eventually coming to terms with her own sexual awakening, identity and sense of self.
Sandwich by Catherine Newman
Catherine Newman lays bare what it means to be a woman and mother in midlife, when the matriarch of the family gathers with her husband and adult children for a weeklong beach vacation. It’s moving, funny and oh-so-relatable.
The Idea of You by Robinne Lee
A 40-year-old single mom has an unexpected love affair with the 24-year-old lead singer of one of the most popular boy bands on the planet. This age-gap romance is part fantasy fulfillment, part intense love story, and it was adapted brilliantly onscreen by Anne Hathaway.
Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman
This quirky and irreverent tale finds a middle-aged woman coming to terms with the challenges of midlife—raising a teenager, her lackluster career and marriage, her best friend dying. On a whim she begins wearing her dog in a baby sling—and then can’t stop.
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett’s latest engrossing novel is about a 57-year-old mother who finally tells the story of her once-upon-a-time love affair with a famous Hollywood star to her three grown daughters. It’s poignant, introspective and beautifully nostalgic.
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhorn
Historical fiction fans will love this true story of Martha Ballard, a 54-year-old midwife in 1789 who investigates a shocking murder in her small Maine town—and will stop at nothing to get justice, even at the risk of tearing her community and family apart.
The Change by Kristen Miller
Three middle-aged women discover that menopause brings them new “gifts.” They begin channeling their superpowers to find the killer of young women in their affluent neighborhood.