An Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestseller, and a Goodreads Choice Award finalist.
“A laugh-out-loud funny, pitch-perfect novel that will have readers rooting for this unlikely, relatable, and totally lovable heroine, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler is the ultimate escape—and will leave moms everywhere questioning whether it isn’t time for a #momspringa of their own.” —New York Journal of … their own.” —New York Journal of Books
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. When one man in particular makes quick work of Amy’s heart, she risks losing herself completely in the unexpected escape, and as the summer comes to an end, Amy realizes too late that she must make an impossible decision: stay in this exciting new chapter of her life, or return to the life she left behind.
But before she can choose, a crisis forces the two worlds together, and Amy must stare down a future where she could lose both sides of herself, and every dream she’s ever nurtured, in the beat of a heart.
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I really enjoyed this audiobook. It reminded me a lot of another that I listened to a couple of years ago, How Hard Can It Be? (Kate Reddy #2) by Allison Pearson. I loved that audiobook, and I loved this one as well. The stories are very similar. A women with two children whose husband chooses to stop being a part of the family. The women are left to deal with the children and all of life’s necessities on their own. In this book, Amy Byler needed to find a job to earn money.
She is hired by the school where her children attend school as a librarian. After three years on her own, dealing with health emergencies, figuring out how to budget to buy food, clothes, and home repairs. Amy does an amazing job of making life work, except on the fashion and romance fronts. She buys most of her clothes at Kohl’s and borrows from friends. Amy is lucky, she has some great friends, one who helps with the kids.
Still Amy hasn’t had a chance to be on her own since her kids were born, long before her husband left her because he had a nervous breakdown. But her husband has come back to see the kids, and he wants them for the whole summer. This gives Amy the opportunity to attend a national library conference in New York City. Once there, Amy begins to realize the toll that her marriage and, especially, the past three years has taken on her life.
Time in New York allows Amy to reevaluate her life, spend time with a friend she hadn’t been in touch with for a long time, and meet some new people. That friend takes Amy under her wing and makes her the star of a fashion magazine article called, Momspringa, a play on the Amish Rumspringa. This involves Amy getting totally made over and her wardrobe updated and improved.
Amy finally has time to figure out who she really is, above and beyond being a mother and librarian. She remembers things she used to enjoy. She suddenly has time to read books again. And she meets a hot male librarian who awakes the inner Amy.
This was an insightful and fun book to listen to. Narration by Amy McFadden was spectacular. I’ve never listened to an audiobook narrated by her that wasn’t thoroughly enjoyable, and this one was no exception. She made Amy and the other characters come to life in every way.
I highly recommend this audiobook.
I bought this book from Audible, and I’m so glad that I did.
You don’t have to be an overworked mom to appreciate this book. I think as women we feel the need to do so much more, so who wouldn’t want a vacation from their life (#lifespringa)? A fun read full of laughter, love and fearlessness.
A fun read from start to finish. Go, Amy Byler, Go!
Rating: 3.0/5.0
Genre:
Contemporary + Humor
Amy Byler is a single mom. One day the husband who abandoned her and her two children (Cori & Joe) returns and wants to bond with his kids. So he offers to take care of the children for the summer. So this will be a great opportunity for Amy to find herself, discovers the world surrounding her and live a life she never had.
The story will be very appealing and inspiring for those moms who live their whole life 100% for their family and children. This story will show them that they also need to have the fun they deserve besides being responsible for their kids.
I think the story and the writing were just OK. Nothing special. I was expecting the self-discovery to be a lot deeper than what it was. I was expecting that this self-discovery would be beyond the gender of the character and also beyond being a mom. But it was not. It was more specific to that demographic category. The humor in the book did not click with me, I did not find it to be funny where it was supposed to be. I appreciate the references to some classic books though.
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This book had me running around saying “Momspringa” for months! I drove my friends and family nuts! I loved it!
Well-written, laugh out loud moments, a pleasure to read. Loved it, and loved the other books by Kelly Harms.
I listed to the audiobook while driving to pick up my youngest at college, and it was wonderful – except for the fact that it made me weep while behind the wheel, which may not have been completely safe. We survived, and it made a long trip fly by. It’s the story of Amy Byler, librarian in a private school in Pennsylvania, who’s husband left her with two small children. She spent three years in survival mode, and the book begins when he comes back unexpectedly and wants to have a place once again in the lives of his children. Amy grudgingly agrees to leave the kids with him in order to have some time for herself in New York. This was an honest and often painful look at what motherhood is like, the regrets and dreams we have, and what it’s truly like to love your children desperately – to the point that you feel guilty about taking care of yourself. But this isn’t a sad story. It’s a fun and hopeful story. You’ll want to experience #momspringa with Amy, as she has an unforgettable summer. And you’ll love Daniel, too, just FYI, but I won’t say anymore. Read it yourself, but if you’re listening to the audiobook while driving, be prepared. You will cry, and having tissues would definitely be a good thing.
The Overdue Life of Amy Byler…
A good book. Amy seemed like a fun lady, her kids, despite their father are pretty terrific. Lena and Daniel are a dream.
However Talia, Matt and Jean-Peter are horrible. They are the “with friends like these…” variety. The way they treat Amy is deplorable. If I wasn’t as invested in finding out what would happen with Daniel I would have stopped reading before the makeover.
The ending was kind of lackluster, not worth low star ratings, but also not worthy of a five either.
Harris writes a laugh out loud and wonderfully true look at motherhood. I highly recommend this book to overworked and underappreciated moms everywhere who love their kids beyond measure.
This is a fun and fluffy chick lit story about a single mom whose husband abandoned her and her kids three years earlier, only to return in a fit of conscience and give her the summer off. It’s the first time Amy has been free to tend to her own needs and make her own choices since her early 20s, when she married and had kids. She goes from Pennsylvania to New York, initially to attend a librarian conference as a speaker (hence the whole “overdue life” bit–it’s an allusion to her profession), and then to stay with a college best friend who now runs a beauty magazine. She thus finds herself the subject of the article “Momspringa”: a newly coined term meaning a sabbatical from mom-hood. They give her a makeover, send her to daily exercise classes and the spa and out for fancy meals every day, turn her into a Twitter sensation, and set her up on a series of blind dates with eligible men vying for her attention. Meanwhile, at the conference, she meets hot single dad librarian Daniel, and they have fantastic chemistry… but they don’t want to pursue an actual relationship, because she’s supposed to go home at the end of the summer, and then where would they be?
That’s the light and fluffy stuff. As the story goes on, though, Amy starts to have more of an identity crisis. Why is she enjoying being away from her kids so much? Does that make her no better than her ex (who isn’t technically her ex because she never bothered to file for divorce)? Does John, said ex, want her back now? Does she want him back? Has she settled into the identity of the woman John martyred all those years ago, refusing to accept help so that she can stay stuck in her bitterness? Can she forgive him and move on with her life–either with him or without him?
I was wondering how the story could possibly end about halfway through, because while I love the transformation Amy gets to experience in New York, she still does have kids back home, and she’s so conflicted between John and Daniel. In a normal rom-com, she’d obviously end up with Daniel… but this is more chick lit than rom-com. It’s less about her romantic life and more about finding herself. She’s still got a life she loves back in Pennsylvania, and a lot of history and baggage with her ex-husband, who, yes, abandoned her, but is actually portrayed as a rather sympathetic character. I’m glad it ended the way it did, though. By the time the story got there, we the reader get to experience the evolution of Amy’s thoughts and feelings with her such that it really couldn’t end any other way. She finds herself, she finds peace, and she gets a second chance at happiness.
Clever, funny, and completely relatable. I ate this book up! For all the mothers out there who fantasize about what it might be like to take a month off and spend it in New York City, this one is for you. I love Kelly Harms’ writing style and her dead-on portrait of women who try to juggle it all. This would be a great vacation read!
Interesting – really don’t know why she didn’t take him to the cleaners.
An enjoyable, heartwarming read about a still-youngish mother who’s been holding it together after her husband abandons her, and what happens when he reappears three years later and circumstances allow her to go on what turns into a very public “#momspringa.” Good snarky first-person narration and fun dialogue/texting is what makes it a pleasure. I wasn’t sure I loved the contrapuntal journal entries from the daughter, but it works out well. It helps that our heroine’s new love interest is a librarian/writer/reader’s dream: handsome AND extremely literate AND nice as hell. (Do such men really exist? #HopeSo) Highly recommended for exhausted moms and under-appreciated literate women afflicted by low-energy husbands (current or past).
This was a good light hearted easy read.
It was an easy read and a decent story but the main character’s personality is hard to stand.
I listened to the audio version of this book, narrated by Amy McFadden. I enjoyed the narration. I felt McFadden conveyed the emotions of characters as described by the author. Her narration of Talia’s liveliness and Lena’s wit was spot on. The narration of the male voices was agreeable.
“A laugh-out-loud funny, pitch-perfect novel…” yada, yada. I do wonder why publicists continue to flog books with such exuberance. I rarely find books live up to such praise and my disappointment is greater when they don’t.
And that’s the situation I find myself in with THE OVERDUE LIFE OF AMY BYLER by Kelly Harms. The book is not bad; it’s at times better than OK, but I did find it an average read overall.
This is Amy Byler’s story, yet I found her to be one of the least interesting characters in the book. Amy’s journey from suburban mother with saintly status to a woman who experiences “life” and is reborn is not a new one. Like many other book characters before her, she takes advantage of a convenient set of circumstances to head off on a voyage of self-discovery. Her money woes are fixed, her childcare issues are resolved, men love her, people think she is so clever, she has a makeover that elevates her physical looks and yet she still retains that certain something that I suppose readers are meant to find endearing.
I found her friends Talia and Lena, and Daniel, her love interest, to be much more interesting. Further, I would have liked to know more about her husband John’s story. At what point does a man choose to leave his family, and especially in such a callous way? What made him want to come back 3 years later? I know we learn some of this throughout this book but I would have preferred more.
The book is an easy read and ticks the box as escapist fiction. It’s fluffy. Even trying to tackle serious issues, it never loses this fluffiness.
Amy Byler really lived that summer! The characters and storyline are excellent.
This was such a fantastic novel! Amy is a librarian in a small PA town raising her 15-year-old daughter, Cori and her 12-year-old son, Joe. Three years earlier, her husband John went on a business trip to Hong Kong and then proceeded to inform her that he was unhappy and wasn’t coming home. Then she runs into him in the drug store. Thus begins a hilarious tale of a father trying to earn the forgiveness of his children and a mom that suddenly gets time to herself. Of course, being the responsible parent and librarian that she is, she decides to take this opportunity to go to a conference in New York to earn some continuing education credits, but ends up doing so much more!
Without giving spoilers, let me say that this one has a fabulous cast of characters that are so different and so developed that it blew my mind. Amy was a great main character, however, I truly feel like her daughter Cori stole the show. Each of her children was wonderfully quirky and smart in their own ways, lending amazingly funny and insightful banter between them. Her best friend Lena (nun turned teacher) was incredible, funny, blunt, and just amazing. Amy, herself was also hilarious, but something about Lena just kept me laughing from beginning to end.
And speaking of laughing, this is truly a laugh out loud book that had me in tears several times. Everything wasn’t always obviously funny, but I would be reading, stop, go back, then be doubled over laughing at the situations. The events and dialogue were just so brutally honest and relatable at times, I just couldn’t help myself! And I good amount of these moments are within Cori’s reading journal entries. Loved that girl… Just loved her!
In some ways, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler has a vibe similar to How Stella Got Her Groove back, but in other ways, it’s just a purely entertaining read and doesn’t really have any life-changing message embedded into Amy’s story. Yes, she got screwed over by her husband and had to pick up the pieces. She gets the opportunity for a break from her everyday life and has a big time in the city. Things change with her and with her children. But when it’s all said and done, she’s still a mom and a librarian – but may just have a refreshed perspective on her life and a new pep in her step.
My only criticism at all, and this is minor, is that I felt the book was a bit longer than necessary. Things were fast-paced for a while, but then it started to drag a bit during the last part of Amy’s visit to New York. Other than that, I found this one to be absolute perfection from beginning to end!
*Thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for providing this copy in exchange for my honest review!
Now, I am pretty vocal about my dislike to the first person point of view, and then when I miss the point of doing the proper research before agreeing to review a book I let myself down at times.
But Amy’s emotion-filled continues strain of thoughts starts to make sense as it paints a demonstrative picture of her chaotic life after her husband and the father of her children walked out on them three years ago.
This story was a challenge to me, I admit, and sometimes it is good to be challenged out of our comfort zones. There were parts that I really enjoyed, like Amy’s kids and especially her daughter with her wit and son with his smarts. The banter was lively, and the emotions as Amy is first time faced with her ex-husband were genuinely true.
The foodie part was delicious to read, who wouldn’t want to spend a week in New York eating yourself through the city! And as an avid reader, the talk about books, and the classics were endearing. Now, the project Amy was doing to get the kids to read more was fascinating but it got way too much attention to my liking, even to the point of starting to sound like a filler and slowing the flow of the mid part of the story.
Just cause the humor wasn’t really lining with mine, does not mean that it wouldn’t be funny for someone else. There were many lines and scenes I could see had the potential for laughs, and still entertaining for all of us, I am sure.
The time Amy spends in New York, with the free makeover, and meeting new people, trying new things, new scenes for her, they were fun and light, including amusing situations and humorously awkward turns. The energy of those scenes is one of an overly strained and stressed out person finally letting it go, Amy was like college freshman after the finals week, ready to let it loose while feeling guilty of not studying – in Amy’s case being with her kids – after that has come all they know.
In the end, Amy’s story turns into fairytale-like happiness, her worries and struggles being washed away with a chance of romance as well.
For me, a three Spoon book is a good story, it is not one of my favorites, but that’s okay, not every book can be that. Amy’s story is filled with her love and passion for her kids, books, and food, and I appreciate all of that. I can see why this book has been so wildly popular, even if it just missed the bullseye with me.
From heartbreak to happiness, Amy navigates her life spicing it up with humor, turning difficult situations to a learning experience, and daring to trust her heart again, even after all the bruises it has received, with the new self-confidence she found through the polishing makeover the magazine gave her.
~ Three Spoons
A breezy but very smart read by a writer with a lovely style, terrific sense of humor, keen eye for observation, and a refreshing cast on the woman-at-midlife theme.