BB Digital, $0.99, ISBN 978-0463598238
Contemporary Fiction, 2019

I’m led to believe by the title and the synopsis of Belinda Bennett’s Midlife Crisis that it is about a woman experiencing, well, a midlife crisis brought upon by the onset of menopause.

However, what this story really is about is Sammie-Jo finally discovering the obvious: her husband Tom is a vile and disgusting control freak, one that delights in seeing her face as he constantly and deliberately disrespects her and undermines her wishes. Half of this story is her basically accounting the things this asshole has inflicted on her, when Sammie-Jo isn’t being a bumbling idiot that constantly veers from one train wreck of an episode to another, and the other half is her and her friend doing outlandish things to “emancipate” themselves or something like that.

The “triumph” of this story is Tom finally throwing divorce papers at Sammie-Jo’s face, so I’m not sure that this story is as empowering as it seems to believe it is. It’s just dumb middle-aged women doing dumber things and somehow stumbling into an accidental happy ending.

I suppose this one may work for fans of chick-lit, as Sammie-Jo only proves that the archetypal chick-lit heroine will always be allergic to logic and rational thinking at any age. Me, though, I’m only glad that this thing is short, and hence ends quickly enough without driving my blood pressure to unhealthy high levels.