
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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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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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 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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It can be fun to say yes and try new things.
- By Debbie S on 05-01-25
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 Phoenix Ballroom
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Hogan
- Narrated by: Jane Copland
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For fifty years, Venetia Hargreaves’s world revolved around her husband. She built their life around his big career, with dinner on the table at six, a lovely home, and a dutiful son just as business-minded as his father. Now Venetia’s a wealthy widow left with a beautiful but empty home, an enviable bank balance, and a distinct feeling that she missed the boat. Once upon a time, she was a dance instructor who dreamed of opening her own ballroom school with a fellow teacher who won her heart. Instead, Venetia chose the safer path.
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Hope, renewal,
- By Jennifer A Hayes on 04-12-25
By: Ruth Hogan
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The Goddess of Warsaw
- A Novel
- By: Lisa Barr
- Narrated by: Jane Oppenheimer
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Los Angeles, 2005. Sienna Hayes, Hollywood’s latest It Girl, has ambitions to work behind the camera. When she meets Lena Browning, the enormously mysterious and famous Golden Age movie star, Sienna sees her big break. She wants to direct a picture about Lena’s life—but the legendary actor’s murky past turns out to be even darker than Sienna dreamed. Before she was a Living Legend, Lena Browning was Bina Blonski, a Polish Jew whose life and family were destroyed by the Nazis.
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Too much fictionalization of real events
- By Shar Boogie R on 07-27-24
By: Lisa Barr
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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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The Overdue Life of Amy Byler
- By: Kelly Harms
- Narrated by: Amy McFadden
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Overworked and underappreciated, single mom Amy Byler needs a break. So when the guilt-ridden husband who abandoned her shows up and offers to take care of their kids for the summer, she accepts his offer and escapes rural Pennsylvania for New York City. Usually grounded and mild mannered, Amy finally lets her hair down in the city that never sleeps. She discovers a life filled with culture, sophistication, and - with a little encouragement from her friends - a few blind dates.
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Enjoyable narration. Story is an easy read.
- By Em Jay Reads on 07-18-19
By: Kelly Harms
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Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
- A Novel
- By: Jessica Guerrieri
- Narrated by: Mia Hutchinson-Shaw, Jessica Guerrieri
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Leah O'Connor is torn between the life she's currently living and the allure of a phantom life that can no longer be hers. Swept off her feet by the gentle charm of Lucas O'Connor, Leah's unexpected pregnancy changes the course of her carefree and nomadic existence. Over a decade and three children later, Leah is unraveling. She resents the world in which her artistic aspirations have been sidelined by the overwhelming demands of motherhood, and the ever-present rift between herself and her mother-in-law, Christine, is best dulled by increasingly fuller glasses of wine.
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Captivating from the beginning 🤍
- By Anais on 05-13-25
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The Maid's Diary
- A Novel
- By: Loreth Anne White
- Narrated by: Jane Oppenheimer
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Kit Darling is a maid with a snooping problem. She’s the “invisible girl,” compelled to poke into her wealthy clients’ closely guarded lives. It’s a harmless hobby until Kit sees something she can’t unsee in the home of her brand-new clients: a secret so dark it could destroy the privileged couple expecting their first child. This makes Kit dangerous to the couple. In turn, it makes the couple—who might kill to keep their secret—dangerous to Kit.
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Dark, powerful, twisty thriller
- By MA Reviewer on 03-04-23
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A Map to Paradise
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
With her name on the Hollywood blacklist and her life on hold, starlet Melanie Cole has little choice in company. There is her next-door neighbor, Elwood, but the screenwriter’s agoraphobia allows for just short chats through open windows. He’s her sole confidante, though, as she and her housekeeper, Eva, an immigrant from war-torn Europe, rarely make conversation. Then one early morning Melanie and Eva spot Elwood’s sister-in-law and caretaker, June, digging in his beloved rose garden. After that they don’t see Elwood at all anymore.
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Not my favorite from my favorite author.
- By Ginger on 03-28-25
By: Susan Meissner
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The Wife Upstairs
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Hawkins
- Narrated by: Emily Shaffer, Kirby Heyborne, Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates—a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name. But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester. Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates’ most mysterious resident.
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Ugh🤦🏻♀️
- By Julian Flores on 01-06-21
By: Rachel Hawkins
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Mrs. Everything
- A Novel
- By: Jennifer Weiner
- Narrated by: Ari Graynor, Beth Malone
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Growing up in 1950s Detroit, they live in a perfect “Dick and Jane” house, where their roles in the family are clearly defined. Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world more fair; Bethie is the pretty, feminine good girl, a would-be star who enjoys the power her beauty confers and dreams of a traditional life. But the truth ends up looking different from what the girls imagined. Jo and Bethie survive traumas and tragedies.
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Absolutely beautiful
- By Courtney Engle on 06-13-19
By: Jennifer Weiner
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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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Feel good fun
- By J. Kapcheck on 05-26-25
By: Sue Hincenbergs
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The Girl from Greenwich Street
- A Novel of Hamilton, Burr, and America’s First Murder Trial
- By: Lauren Willig
- Narrated by: Jane Oppenheimer
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At the start of a new century, a shocking murder transfixes Manhattan, forcing bitter rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr to work together to save a man from the gallows. Just before Christmas 1799, Elma Sands slips out of her Quaker cousin’s boarding house—and doesn’t come home. Has she eloped? Run away? No one knows—until her body appears in the Manhattan Well. Her family insists they know who killed her. Handbills circulate around the city accusing a carpenter named Levi Weeks of seducing and murdering Elma. But privately, quietly, Levi’s wealthy brother calls in a special favor.
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Good historical who-done-it
- By Jean P. on 05-18-25
By: Lauren Willig
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Margo's Got Money Troubles
- A Novel
- By: Rufi Thorpe
- Narrated by: Elle Fanning
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.
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I love Margo’s brain and Elle’s voice 👏🏻💕
- By Jessica Larson on 08-19-24
By: Rufi Thorpe
funny and not typical
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Total fun!!!
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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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Very Much Enjoyed!
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