BookBirdDog (BookDilettante): Long Enough to Love You

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About Long Enough to Love You by Kirsten Pursell

Publisher: Atmosphere Press (January 1, 2023)

Paperback: 252 pages

A coming-of-middle-age novel that challenges the assumption that the status quo is as good as it gets.

A love story of self, of past, of present, of future. One woman’s journey to put the pieces of her life together in the most meaningful way — at times chaotic, at times cathartic, but ultimately beautiful in all its imperfect pieces.

Jenn, fifty-something and empty-nesting, feels like a donut: whole on the outside but missing the middle. The deafening sound of silence in the picture-perfect, oversized home she shares with a husband who does not see her makes the voices arguing in her head hard to ignore. One voice tells her to stay because safe and simple is good; another says leave so you can be the version of yourself not defined by others. The thought of ever after without happily feels like purgatory.

The chance discovery of her long-forgotten diaries unearths memories of a first love long buried, reminders that the most beautiful love is sometimes wasted on the young. Her words become a very real reminder of everything first love had been when she reconnects with Tripp in unexpected ways.

Long Enough to Love You by Kirsten Pursell follows Jenn – a courageous yet vulnerable protagonist – as she dissects and unpacks her marriage in an emotional journey to stay true to herself despite societal norms and middle-age stereotypes that would suggest otherwise.

My comments:

I found that Jenn, in her mid-50s, a new empty nester, became entranced with the freedom that she finds opening up before her. Her re-examining of an unsatisfactory marriage, the death of her mother, and finding her old diaries, have also prompted her to want to spread her wings.

Her attempts to recapture her youthful past might be considered risque in at least one event. That she has a happy landing in her search for happiness is the reader's hope and it seems she will.

Women in a similar position as Jenn will find her story inspiring and cheer her on towards the happy ending and a second chance at love.

About the Author

Kirsten Pursell is an American author and sometime blogger. She lives in Oceanside, California. In addition to On Becoming Me: Memoir of an 80’s Teenager, she has published two additional novels: Harvard and Company Clown. Her 4th novel, Long Enough to Love You, a women’s coming-of-middle-age contemporary fiction novel that chronicles one woman’s journey as she challenges the assumption the status quo is as good as it gets in middle-age and explores the reality we are never too old to find happiness and maybe even love later in life. Her books were downloaded over 10,000 times in 2022

Lisa Munley, TLC Book Tours

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