The Midlife Plot Twist: How to Reboot Your Life Without Burning It Down Even If You Really, Really Want to

It's not a midlife crisis--it's a midlife plot twist!

Packed with honest, insightful, and deeply relatable advice for anyone who has reached that middle point of life, this humorous and practical guide rejects the outdated cliché of the midlife crisis, instead offering a fresh, empowering vision for any woman in her 40s or 50s looking for reinvention, courage, and clarity.

Welcome to midlife--where your body is totally unpredictable, your career is ever-evolving, and your search history now includes, "Can I pull off bangs at 45?" This is not another menopause book; this is also not a book about how to "manifest," "visualize," or "self-actualize" your way into a better life. This book is for those of us who burst into our 20s with only a Cosmopolitan magazine education about how to be a grown-up and have now reached that middle stage of life and are wondering what's next.

The Midlife Plot Twist is for women who are truly ready to figure out what they want that second chapter of their life to look like. This is a smart, funny guidebook for women trying to navigate every part of their life with humor, honesty, and heart. From forgotten passwords to rediscovering passions, it's a laugh-out-loud reminder that the middle years aren't something to survive--they're something to celebrate. Using expert advice, exercises, and analysis to help readers figure out how they landed where they are now, authors and editors Lindsay Goldwert and Gabrielle Moss offer practical information and guidance about values and goals as it pertains to love and sex, money and career, and friends and family.

Part pep talk, part permission slip, and 100 percent relatable, readers will laugh, nod, and feel seen. Because if midlife has taught us anything, it's that the only way forward is with grace--and a great sense of humor.

Author: Lindsay Goldwert,Gabrielle Moss
Publisher: Running Press Adult
Published: 09/15/2026
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.50w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9798894143002


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/17/2026

About the Author
Lindsay Goldwert has worked as an editorial director, writer and podcaster, and is the author of Bow Down: Lessons from Dominatrixes on How to Be a Boss in Life, Love and Work, a Glamour Magazine Best Book. She's written about everything from relationships to midlife adventures, personal finance to power dynamics, for publications like the New York Times, New York Magazine, Refinery29, Fast Company, Marketwatch, and many others. As part of her own mid-life plot twist, she will soon be certified as a sex educator and coach through the Sexual Health Alliance.

Gabrielle Moss is the author of Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, GQ, Slate, the Daily Beast, RogerEbert.com and Refinery29. She has appeared on NPR, the CBC, and Canadian national morning TV show The Social, and was a talking head in the 2023 documentary Judy Blume Forever.