Magical Midlife Survival Guide

The Wine, Chocolate & Paranormal Shenanigans Series, Book 1

By: Larissa Emerald

Narrated by: B.J. Harrison

Lainie Cassidy is done trying to be good enough in someone else’s eyes. With the unbreakable spirit of a warrior, strong and brave and deserving of happiness, Lainie is more than ready to call on the magic she hadn’t known she’d inherited.

Forty-two-year-old Lainie takes her two kids and leaves her abusive husband. She’s determined to face her fears and make it on her own. With an eye on her budget, she digs through boxes for items to use in homemade Halloween costumes and discovers a forgotten pocket watch from her Nana. This beloved treasure thrusts her into a new world where magic is real. As she learns the unpredictable nature of the timepiece plus the mysterious relation it has to books, she struggles to keep this newfound power secret from her kids, friends, and family. To her dismay, the magic has designs of its own.

Lainie finds dealing with moody teens and the betrayal of her aging body hard enough, but when things start conjuring out of seemingly nowhere, she won’t survive without a heavy dose of wine and chocolate. Add in friends to help and she might yet withstand these paranormal shenanigans.

©2022 Larissa Emerald (P)2022 Larissa Emerald

Good Start to the Series

I enjoyed this book. Though there are some references to spousal abuse, it’s not graphic and only supports the rest of the story. B.J. Harrison is a really good narrator in my opinion. He narrates all the Nocturne Falls books as well. I find his voice to be very easy to listen too and his characters easy to distinguish. Starting the second book now. I have high hopes of another good experience.

Entertaining enough, but I won’t be getting more

This book had a title similar to a series I enjoyed but didn’t realize the author was different. I listened through it anyway, but the characters just aren’t that believable. A woman who escapes spousal abuse and serves divorce papers should have more emotional depth. It’s all pretty surface and there’s nothing that makes you committed to the character development. Also, the choice of reader was disappointing. Choosing a man to deliver a woman’s story was too much dissonance- it’s just not the right genre for him, either. The voices and emotional affects he chose weren’t how a woman would have interpreted it. I found myself reciting it back in my own mind the way I would have read it to myself from a book. All in all, not terrible but disappointing.

Step by step survival guide into fun!

This story is truly a step by step story if one woman’s divorce experience with PNR elements. Once you get through the mundane background portion of the story and into the PNR elements, the story got interesting and fun. The narrator was good and did a great job of voicing the story. I really enjoyed the PNR aspect of the story and how it took the tragic and made it interesting.

Disappointing

I found the story a struggle to get through, largely because of the narration. A story about a female who empowers herself to leave an abusive husband should have a female narrator. The there was no intersection of the two plot lines and it ended abruptly.