
Sylvia's Second Act
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Jane Oppenheimer
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By:
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Hillary Yablon
About this listen
Her husband’s cheating on her. She hates Boca. Sylvia is mad and she isn’t going to take it anymore. She’s moving back north, to the city of her dreams—with her best friend, Evie, in tow. Think a screwball comedy featuring a sophisticated Thelma and Louise with martinis in hand . . .
When sixty-three-year-old Sylvia finds her husband in bed with the floozy of their Boca retirement community, she’s shocked and furious . . . at first. By the time her head stops spinning, Sylvia realizes that actually, this isn’t what she wants anymore anyway.
So she enlists her best friend, the glamorous older widow Evie, to join her in setting up a new life in Manhattan. Sylvia’s ex-husband may have lost her life savings, but Sylvia and Evie are scrappy and determined, unopposed to pawning jewelry and roughing it in tiny apartments. And before long, Sylvia signs on to revive her decades-old wedding planning business with a former professional rival. Sylvia has a lot to prove, and beneath it all, she can’t help but wonder: Will she ever be able to get back into the dating game?
Sylvia doesn't want to be twenty-five or thirty again. Her age gives her wisdom, experience, and perspective. A career, sex, fun, and a new romance—her entire second act is stretched out in front of her, beckoning to her. It’s her time, and watch out, world, Sylvia is coming!
©2024 Hillary Yablon (P)2024 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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This has soared to the top of my all-time favs!
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I loved it
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Critic reviews
"A first-rate novel of second chances that will have you laughing right from the start. Sylvia will show you that it's never too late to reinvent yourself, especially if you have a good friend by your side and a cosmopolitan in hand." —Steven Rowley, New York Times bestselling author of The Celebrants
"Sixty-something Sylvia Fisher's life needs a make-over. She's sick of retirement life in Boca Raton AND her cheating husband. Novelist Hillary Yablon gives readers hungry for a midlife romance a fizzy, delicious story we didn't know we needed. Take a bow, Sylvia, cause readers are gonna give this laugh-out-loud female buddy story made in Manhattan a standing ovation." —Mary Kay Andrews, New York Times bestselling author of The Homewreckers
"Sylvia’s story hit all of my favorite notes - laugh out loud funny, action packed and ultimately redemptive. It’s a love song to women of a certain age, and I’ll be humming it for years to come." —Annabel Monaghan, bestselling author of Nora Goes Off Script and Same Time Next Summer
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The Summer of Yes
- By: Courtney Walsh
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby, Cathi Colas
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Sometimes you’re so busy writing other people’s stories that you can lose the plot of your own. This wasn’t how Kelsey Worthington’s day was supposed to go. She wasn’t supposed to be picking up Starbucks for her smarmy boss. She wasn’t supposed to get hit by a car that jumped the curb. And she certainly wasn’t supposed to wake up in a hospital room next to Georgina Tate—the legendary matriarch of New York City businesswomen.
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2025 summer read
- By Anonymous User on 07-08-25
By: Courtney Walsh
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How to Age Disgracefully
- A Novel
- By: Clare Pooley
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens’ Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards. The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign—but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide.
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Aging imperfections
- By Susan Love on 08-07-24
By: Clare Pooley
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The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
- By: Abbi Waxman
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book. When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They're all - or mostly all - excited to meet her! She'll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It's a disaster!
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Engaging story but not well written
- By Rachel A. on 08-16-19
By: Abbi Waxman
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The Authenticity Project
- A Novel
- By: Clare Pooley
- Narrated by: Anna Cordell
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren’t really honest with each other. But what if they were? And so he writes—in a plain, green journal—the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It’s run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves - and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica’s Café.
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Sweet, easy listen
- By Benhandel on 04-23-20
By: Clare Pooley
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The Last Love Note
- A Novel
- By: Emma Grey
- Narrated by: Leeanna Walsman
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Kate is a bit of a mess. Two years after losing her young husband Cameron, she’s grieving, solo parenting, working like mad at her university fundraising job, always dropping the ball—and yet clinging to her sense of humor. Lurching from one comedic crisis to the next, she also navigates an overbearing mom and a Tinder-obsessed best friend who's determined to matchmake Kate with her hot new neighbor.
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Incredibly breathtaking
- By Monique on 12-05-23
By: Emma Grey
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The Sober Diaries
- How One Woman Stopped Drinking and Started Living
- By: Clare Pooley
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Like many women, Clare Pooley found the juggle of a stressful career and family life a struggle, so she left her successful role as a managing partner in one of the world's biggest advertising agencies to look after her family. She knew the change wouldn't be easy, but she never expected to find herself an overweight, depressed, middle-aged mother of three who was drinking more than a bottle of wine a day and spending her evenings Googling 'am I an alcoholic?'
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The performance makes this one worthwhile...
- By River Holmes-miller on 04-24-18
By: Clare Pooley
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Welcome to Murder Week
- By: Karen Dukess
- Narrated by: Carlotta Brentan
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When thirty-four-year-old Cath loses her mostly absentee mother, she is ambivalent. With days of quiet, unassuming routine in Buffalo, New York, Cath consciously avoids the impulsive, thrill-seeking lifestyle that her mother once led. But when she’s forced to go through her mother’s things one afternoon, Cath is perplexed to find tickets for an upcoming “murder week” in England’s Peak District: a whole town has come together to stage a fake murder mystery to attract tourism to their quaint hamlet.
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Storyline and character development
- By Bookdfh on 07-04-25
By: Karen Dukess
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Aftertaste
- By: Daria Lavelle
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos, Tessa Albertson, André Santana, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Konstantin Duhovny is a haunted man. His father died when he was ten, and ghosts have been hovering around him ever since. Kostya can’t exactly see the ghosts, but he can taste their favorite foods. Flavors of meals he’s never eaten will flood his mouth, a sign that a spirit is present. Kostya has kept these aftertastes a secret for most of his life, but one night, he decides to act on what he’s tasting. And everything changes.
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Devoured It!
- By Tara L. Darbyshire on 05-24-25
By: Daria Lavelle
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All the Other Mothers Hate Me
- By: Sarah Harman
- Narrated by: Georgina Sadler
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Florence Grimes is a thirty-one-year-old party girl who always takes the easy way out. Single, broke and unfulfilled after the humiliating end to her girl band career, she has only one reason to get out of bed each day: her ten-year-old son Dylan. But then Alfie Risby, her son’s bully and the heir to a vast frozen food empire, mysteriously vanishes during a class trip, and Dylan becomes the prime suspect. Florence, for once, is faced with a task she can’t quit: She’s got to find Alfie and clear her son’s name, or risk losing Dylan forever.
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Good book!
- By Amanda Corkum on 03-13-25
By: Sarah Harman
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Mother-Daughter Murder Night
- A Novel
- By: Nina Simon
- Narrated by: Jane Oppenheimer
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud of: her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she’s built. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage—and hoping that boredom won’t kill her before the cancer does.
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Don’t waste your money
- By Audrey Russell on 09-14-23
By: Nina Simon
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Summer Fridays
- A Novel
- By: Suzanne Rindell
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Romanski
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Summer 1999: Twentysomething Sawyer is striving to make it in New York. Between her assistant job in publishing, her secret dreams of becoming a writer, and her upcoming wedding to her college boyfriend, her is plate full. Only one problem: She is facing an incredibly lonely summer as her fiancé has been spending longer and longer hours at work . . . with an all-too-close female colleague, Kendra. When Kendra's boyfriend, Nick, invites Sawyer to meet up and compare notes about their suspicions, the meeting goes awry.
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Did not love.
- By Christen Ryan on 09-04-24
By: Suzanne Rindell
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Beach House Rules
- By: Kristy Woodson Harvey
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Mia Hutchinson-Shaw, Suehyla El-Attar Young
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Charlotte Sitterly’s husband is arrested for a white-collar crime, she and her daughter Iris are locked out of their house by the FBI and—what’s potentially even worse—thrust into the spotlight of @JuniperShoresSocialite, the town’s snarky anonymous Instagram account. Desperate and cut off from her bank accounts, Charlotte moves to a former beachfront bed-and-breakfast that’s home to a community of single mothers and draws plenty of gossip in the small coastal North Carolina town.
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Mommune classic idea
- By Jason on 07-08-25
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The Retirement Plan
- A Novel
- By: Sue Hincenbergs
- Narrated by: Kiiri Sandy, John Pirhalla
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After thirty years of friendship, Pam dreams of her perfect retirement with Nancy, Shalisa, Marlene, and their husbands—until their husbands pool their funds for an investment that goes terribly wrong. Suddenly, their golden years are looking as dreary as their marriages. But when the women discover their husbands have seven-figure life insurance policies, a new dream forms. And this time, they need a hitman.
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Love the characters
- By Amazon Customer on 06-24-25
By: Sue Hincenbergs
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This Time Tomorrow
- A Novel
- By: Emma Straub
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Emma Straub
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday.
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Loved!
- By AE on 05-25-22
By: Emma Straub
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33 Place Brugmann
- A Novel
- By: Alice Austen
- Narrated by: Shiromi Arserio, Jilly Bond, Nicholas Boulton, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On the eve of the Nazi occupation, in the heart of Brussels, life for the residents of 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever. Charlotte Sauvin, an art student raised by her beloved architect father in apartment 4L, knows all the details of the building and its people: how light falls on wood floors and voices echo off the marble staircase, the distinct knock of her dear friend, Julian Raphaël, the son of the art dealer’s family across the hall. Then the Raphaëls disappear, leaving everything behind but their priceless art collection, which has simply vanished.
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A wonderful book
- By iggynut on 04-12-25
By: Alice Austen
Total fun!!!
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funny and not typical
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So entertaining!
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So many laughs!
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Just what I needed
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Wonderful Listen
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So Much Fun!
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Funny, heartwarming, and intriguing story
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I enjoyed it
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Fantastic read/listen!!! A must!
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