Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word

Kelsey's middling midlife crisis tale follows the travails of British magazine editor Hope Lyndhurst-Steele, whose 50th birthday ends up being far more traumatic than she could have imagined. Her teenage son is chasing a trampy single mom, her husband wants to move out, her estranged mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer and she's ousted from her job. Hope already feels sorry for herself, so all of this seems likely to crush her until she uses the knocks to gain a new perspective on her life and discover inner strengths. Kelsey unfortunately allows her heroine to be annoyingly self-involved for most of the book, and while her turnaround is refreshing, it comes too late to hook the reader. Save the grating narrator, this menopausal empowerment tale is safely by-the-numbers. (Mar.)