It was sweet. And look, coming out is an important step in every queer person's life, but I'm kinda over coming out stories, as a trope.

Midlife Crisis was a poignant story of one man finally embracing who he really is while on a sabbatical from his “real” life. There were many ups and downs and twists and turns and I appreciated that Ms. North didn’t sugar coat the realities of someone “coming out” at age 53 after 35 years of marriage to a woman, two children, and a small town who would not approve.

All of his life Cameron McGhee did the right thing, a loving son, he put aside the need he felt towards men and married the woman who was his friend and accepted by his family. He “loved” his wife as a friend, and while he knows they made a good life for their children following her death he feels guilty that he wasn’t the time of partner she most likely wanted and needed. With his son home from his time in the Army following college, Cam has taken three months and moved to Austin to finally act on his attraction to men then he will move back home and continue his “normal” life. You’ll I felt so bad for this man who never once acted on his true nature or cheated on his wife during their 35 years of marriage. When he meets Dave Montoya an out and proud gay man, the attraction is undeniable. The more time he spends with Dave and his friends, the more he realizes how much he’s missed in his life.

Dave was the perfect man for Cam as he explores his sexuality for the first time; he is patient, kind, and understanding of Cam’s hang ups.
I thoroughly enjoyed watching the relationship build between Cam and Dave over the course of this book and the pacing of it was perfect for this couple. I love that they took the physical aspect of their attraction at Cam’s pace and that Dave understood what a big deal this was for him.

While I will admit I was a bit disappointed in the actions of some of the characters in this story (and I’m not saying more because I refuse to spoil it for anyone), I could also understand them and was happy to see how things were resolved over time. My one complaint about this book is I wanted more time with Cam and Dave after they figured it all out.

Emotional, intense, and moving, Audra North’s Midlife Crisis was one man’s amazing journey into accepting his true identity and learning that happiness and love is worth the sacrifice.

What do you do when your life goes in the direction expected, but not the one you wished for? That's the burning question in this story of finding love in middle age, with a partner who is willing to be your second chance at happiness.

Cam McGhee's life followed a predictable pattern for a small town Texas man. He married a girl from high school, had two children and ran his feed store business day in and day out. From his teenage years he knew that he was gay, but kept it a secret in his all African-American town, especially when a young man he knew was beaten and ostracized for coming out in the open. Better to be closeted than the alternative. But when Cam's wife dies from sickle cell anemia after 35 years of a steady if not exciting marriage, he knows it's his chance to venture out from the known and see what happens.

Cam's first experience in a gay bar is definitely not what he's looking for, and he wonders if he's made a mistake coming to Austin for a few months break. Then he meets Dave Montoya, a cautiously single, retired, attractive cyclist at a local coffee shop. Dave has experienced his own heartache, breaking up with a partner of 15 years who had been cheating on him. The quiet, attractive black man who catches his eye and eventually engages him in conversation clearly isn't a player on the scene, and his innocence and inexperience are not a turnoff at all. Dave's ready for their friendship and soon friends with benefits relationship to become something more. Is Cam willing to stand up for what he wants now that he has the chance to have the life he'd always wanted?

I loved this story. It's quietly endearing, making you care for the characters and for the unique situation Cam finds himself in. With present days scenes interspersed with flashbacks, it's easy to see how the choices he made as a youth spiraled into a marriage more of convenience than love, and whether or not his wife ever guessed his true feelings, he'll never know. He comported himself as a faithful husband, a loving father, an exemplary member of his small town society, and a competent businessman.

Even if he dreamed of a different life, he never did anything to jeopardize the one he had. He can admit to himself that his fear of being ostracized for being gay drove his decisions. Even now, he worries about what to do about his business back home, being taken care of by his son while he's away. What will his children think if he tells them he's gay? What will they think of him having a relationship so soon after his wife's death, and with a man no less? Through all his turmoil Dave is a steady presence, showing his affection and care and giving Cam the space he needs to come to the myriad of decisions that will affect both their lives. It's a thoughtful, sweet and sexy romance that proves it's never too late to fall in love and find your true self.

This review was originally posted at Straight Shootin' Book Reviews in 2017 (now closed). It's been edited slightly and reposted at All About Romance, feedback linked below.

I was thrilled to find a coming out book about a man who was married to a woman for years and has kids. There aren't many stories out there with this kind of background. It was a decent read, but just okay. 2.5 stars okay. There wasn't anything too exciting or telltale or just much that kept me wanting to read this.

This was a sweet story about two older MC's. I love that the author chose to make her MC's in their 50's. It was a nice change of pace. This is a coming out story and I liked the way it was handled. I'd never read this author before but will check her out again in the future.

**ARC provided through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

It was good to read a story about two men who find each other in their fifties. Cam is from a small town and married his high school sweetheart straight out if school, even though he knew was attracted to men. The town of Bitter is all that he has ever known. It is a small town of black Americans and they know how to look out for each other as long as you dont cross any lines.

After 35 years of marriage Cam's wife Laverne dies, leaving him with two adult children and the chance to live an authentic life and be true to himself but this is easier said than done. Now he has the freedom to choose what choices will he make?

Cam moves to Austin for a few months. He needs to take time for himself and recover and figure out who he is going to be in future. He is also hoping to meet a man and experiment and explore his attraction to men even though he knows this won't be easy. Bitter is a deeply conservative town and he also fears his children will reject him if they find out that he is gay.

When Cam meets Dave he realises that he has a chance to be who he really is but he doesn't know if he can come out to his family and he is scared about what this will mean for his business back in the town of Bitter, so he decides to enjoy the time he has even though he wants more.

Dave is cooly confident, highly educated and a sophisticated business man. He is also deeply attracted to Cam. He wants a stable relationship even though he has been hurt in the past and so he decides to explore his attraction to Cam.

Can the two men make a go of it even though Cam has so many issues?

I thought this was a well written story but it wasnt really a favourite with me. I really liked Dave but I found Cam to be really irritating. I could understand the pressure he faced but overall I thought he was just incredibly dithering. Here was his chance to make a new life for himself and to leave the suffocating town of Bitter. Instead of seizing the opportunity for a new life with both hands and running with it, he kept looking back into his old life trying to hold on and worrying about what people in town would say and do if they found out he was gay.

Cam is 55 years old. If you are still worried about what other people think at the age of 55 then you may as well just lie down and give up the ghost because there is simply no help for you.

Anyway, the story is not just about Cam coming out of the closet. He also had to come out in other ways. He had to get a mobile phone. Who doesn't have a mobile phone in the 21st-century? And this is a businessman! That fact alone deeply irritated me. I thought Dave was very patient and loving because basically he took on somebody who wasn't out and who was still living in the 19th century instead of the 21st. Well done Dave!

The story is well written but it keeps flashing back to Cam's life with his wife and I just wasn't interested in those aspects of the story. I am not a great fan of flashbacks in the stories I read and I wasnt interested in Laverne. I'm sure she was a very nice woman. She seemed very caring of her husband and she also seemed to be very progressive because she went to college and she wanted to do things and her illness held her back but she kept pushing. I had to wonder why Cam was so dated when he had such a progressive wife.

All in all I do think this was a nice story and it was romantic and it had people of colour as main characters and you don't get this in a lot of mm books. Kudos to the author. I did enjoy this story in some ways but I do hope that Cam arrives in the 21st century and knows how to use a mobile phone and perhaps an iPad and a few apps. With Dave by his side I am sure this will happen!

Copy provided by Riptide Publishing via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review - Many thanks.

I tried to read this book several times, but I just could not get into it.

Cam has lived in the closet for all of his adult life, he didn't even have a nightlight. Small, all black Texas town, married, 2 kids and a thriving business. After his wife passes and his son is available to run his business Cam decides to at least try a small taste of what it might be to kiss a man and relocates temporarily to Austin, TX.

Dave is at the point in his life where he can work if he wants to but doesn't need to. He has been openly gay most of his life.
A chance meeting in a coffee shop and the sparks between them fly. They get together slowly and develop strong feelings along the way

This story is really about coming to terms with Cam's sexuality. On telling his children and making the choice to finally live his life as he really wants to. His children's reaction and his reaction to that. It is well told and well developed for the length.

I received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review. The story is about a man, Cam, who has lived his entire life the way society deemed proper in the small town he grew up in. He married, as was expected, and had two children even though he was gay. He had never acted on being gay until after his wife died. He then met Dave and fell in love with him. The book goes back and forth between the present and the past with his wife. A lot happens and you need to read the book to find out all of the events that lead to a HEA ending. The book was well written and it was a great read. I would highly recommend this book.

It took awhile for me to get into it, but once I did, I couldn't help but cheer for a happy ending.

2.5 stars

I read another review for this book on Goodreads, and the reviewer mentioned how this was the kind of book she felt guilty for not liking more; I feel exactly the same. I wanted to like Midlife Crisis so much, and I feel like there were some good elements. But they were strung together with some less than mediocre ones, and the whole story just didn’t mesh well. So Cam is a widower who spent thirty-five years married to a woman when he was really attracted to men, and upon his wife’s death, he decides it’s time to pursue his desire to be with a man. Here’s my issue with this book - I was never able to connect with or really like Cam, and I attribute this to the flashbacks in the story. I don’t care how Cam fell in love with the wife he lived a sort-of lie with. (I hesitate to call this an outright lie, because while Cam may not have been in love with his wife, there’s no doubt in my mind he was devoted to her and their children.) I think that because of the way she appeared to be very fragile I was supposed to think he was such a kind person for sticking it out with and taking care of her, but come on. I don’t want to read about a character that’s already dead. It felt so disjointed, and there was also an election scene featuring the first time former President Obama was elected, and while I have no doubt that this was a momentous event in Cam’s life, I’m very confused about where it falls within the context of this story. The highlight of this story for me was Dave, and I think the book suffered for not having his POV. It would have been much more beneficial to the overall progression of the story than the flashbacks, and it could have given their relationship much more depth. Because while I liked them both, this book was pretty much instalove with as few present day words we got. I think it’s clear to see that overall, this book was a miss for me. I do think there was a lot of potential here, and I haven’t written this writer off. She has some good ideas. I’d just like to see her execution be more focused on the main story.

DNF - no review, way too boring. Will not post one online.

Man. Black. Cam. Father. Gay. Widower. Businessman. Explorer. Afraid.

Cam McGhee is a hard-working family man from the small rural farming community of Bitter, Texas. He and his wife LaVerne "assumed they were both destined to live unremarkable lives in Bitter, because that’s what they’d both been raised to know." Cam loved LaVerne ("not the way a lover would have, or the way a husband should have, but he loved her deeply, just the same") and their two children, and helped her achieve her dream of getting a college degree. Now, after her death from sickle cell anemia following 35 years of marriage, Cam is finally going to act on feelings and desires he has suppressed for years.

Cam meets Dave Montoya in an Austin, Texas coffee shop while taking a few months break from Bitter while his son manages his feed and grain business. Cam's story is interspersed with his past - his marriage, the birth of his children, his business - and North really captures Cam's despair at expectations over which he had little control, at a life that "had been strangely devoid of choices":

"They would graduate in another week and be married less than two weeks after that. ...] He was walking home on a Thursday afternoon, trudging down the sun-baked dirt road leading out of the high school, when the reality hit him.

This was the rest of his life."

What follows is a beautifully told story of two men - fifty-four and mid-forties - who get a second chance at love and life. I really enjoyed this story of love, of choices, of forgiveness. 4.5 stars for Midlife Crisis.

This book intrigued me from the beginning for several reasons. First, how often do we see an m/m romance with characters that are people of color, and then on top of it, they are over the age of 50?!?!?!? These are quite often anomalies in the romance genre, much less gay romance, and having them addressed so prominently in the story was fantastic. And the author did both of those sides of the main characters justice. Addressing all the aches and pains that come with aging, and even having one MC come from a town of all African Americans in Texas, made their journey seem more realistic, falling in love at an age where most people think that people are settled with a partner.

In fact, Dave HAD been settled with a partner, for a number of years, until that partner had his own midlife crisis, and moved on. Cam, meanwhile, was married for 35 years to a woman who died the previous year. He had always known he was gay, but never felt he could be in the tiny, all African American town he lived in. Falling in love was never in Cam’s plans, but finally kissing a man was, as we find in the opening scene. Cam went to Austin to find himself, or possibly to see what he could do to be who he wanted to be for a time.

I understood Cam’s hesitance to move forward with the life that he wanted to lead, but it was frustrating as a reader to understand his continued look at his “old life” as something he needed to get back to, and one he couldn’t move forward from. He’d spent his entire life in the closet, finally moves forward with finding a new love, then makes himself choose between (and this isn’t a surprise since she is called this by her brother) his selfish spoiled daughter who is appalled that her father is gay, versus the man who he fell in love with, and who had had nothing but undying patience for Cam’s slow coming out. Cam had spent his entire life lying to everyone around him, making sure they all had their needs met, and finally his own were being met and he decided to give it up when his daughter threw a tantrum.

Of course, there is an HEA, so Cam gets his man back, and his children approve, but it still seemed like there needed to be more of a challenge on Dave’s side (although his sister Jacqui did a good job of pushing back on Cam).

One piece that was especially telling for how Cam continued to allow everyone to dictate his entire life was the short snippets of his life with LaVerne, through the years. Although it didn’t necessarily show growth of the character, it did show how he continued to be caught in the spiral he began in high school.

All in all, a sweet story, with a man who took care of everyone but himself first, who deserved a happy ending more than most people.

*2.5 stars*

This is the kind of book that I feel guilty for not liking more. I mean, it's a sweet coming out story. Very... nice. Nice. That's the best way I can describe it.

I was really drawn to Midlife Crisis because of the older MCs (both in their 50s) and the fact that one of the MCs is finally able to act on his sexuality now that his wife of many years has passed away. I love first time gay experience stories (a weakness of mine!), and so I was pretty sure this one would be a hit.

My main issue with this book was that it was sooooo very slow. Like I felt like the characters were moving through molasses. It was just this careful slowness that made the book feel like it was double the length that it really was. Just because the characters are older doesn't mean that the book has to feel timid and kind of dull.

Cam's "aw-shucks" shyness was cute and endearing, but I felt like it became kind of gimmicky over time. I wanted just a little more umph out of him. I also felt like Dave was a throwaway character. They were okay together, but I didn't get where the intensity of their feelings was coming from.

I didn't love the way the story felt rushed towards the end, and I really didn't like the flashbacks all throughout. There are many, many flashbacks of Cam and his wife before she passed away, and I felt like that detracted from the romance between Cam and Dave. I know that the author wanted the reader to have some backstory about Cam and his wife's relationship, but it was a bit overkill for me.

I was interested in the town and environment that Cam grew up in. I honestly didn't know that historic African-American municipalities existed (granted, history isn't my thing), and I wanted to know more. I actually googled the town in the story (it doesn't exist, BTW), because I wanted to learn more about it.

Overall, I think many readers will enjoy this one because they (like me) want to hear about people finding their true happiness and true self after years of denial. However, I just wanted something a little different and a little more than what I got. Midlife Crisis was a perfectly fine story, but it just never rose above "okay" for me.

*Copy provided in exchange for an honest review*