First published 2012
Jen Lancaster has spent years dodging the mundane duties of proper adulthood. She owns a Barbie Styling Head and sees no shame in it. But now she faces her biggest challenge yet: actually behaving like the mortgage-carrying, life-insurance-owning adult she technically became somewhere along the way. Jen forces herself through a gauntlet of grown-up milestones she has avoided for too long. She schedules her first mammogram. She volunteers at a halfway house. She tackles investment decisions and other responsible activities that make her squirm. Each adult rite of passage teaches her something valuable about herself and her generation. The lessons often embarrass her, but they also guide her toward the full-fledged adulthood she keeps resisting. Jen discovers that growing up doesn't mean abandoning everything she loves about being young at heart.
Genres: american-fiction, humor, contemporary, adult-fiction, memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking, whimsical
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
352 pages · Hardcover · NAL