Didn't capture my attention and engagement. Interested in trying it again though and hopefully it will take.

Absolute must read for persons in their 20s and 30s. I loved everything about this and how real it was.

I really enjoyed Schaefer's book, Text Me When You Get Home, about female friendship, and while this one was okay, it wasn't quite the commentary on adult life as I was hoping. While a lot of the commentary on how life has changed for people in their twenties and thirties, I felt like it could have gone a lot deeper. Plus, it's from a very white, straight, middle class lens, and doesn't at all touch on how things might look different depending on one's identity and privilege. A good pairing, that might resonate a little more, would be Doree Shafrir's memoir, Thanks for Waiting.

This book was just ~fine~ to me. Some parts kept me super interested, some I wanted to skip over. It was just meh.

As a thirty-something myself, I found this book both enlightening and reassuring. It is not as easy as it was for the generation before us and it is helpful to hear the stories of others that are in similar situations as our own.

BUT YOU'RE STILL SO YOUNG by Kayleen Schaefer is subtitled "How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood." She looks at key life event like graduating college, leaving home, getting married, and having children, BUT her focus is on anecdotes and personal stories, many of which involve dysfunction. Perhaps Schaefer was trying to convince herself and other thirtysomethings that all of this angst is normal and that adulthood is coming even later? I honestly did not understand her goals in writing this and concur with the Kirkus reviewer who says, "A disappointingly superficial approach to a potentially rewarding topic."

This book really hit home with me. With just turning 30 and feeling like I am not where I am supposed to be at this point. It helped put things into perspective. In the end, you have to realize we are all on different journeys, and there is no set time for anything. You also can’t believe everything you see on Instagram and Facebook. I think this is a great book for anyone to read!

After reading plenty of 20-something books, I'm always hesitant about these types of books. However, this one was different. As a 29 year old, staring at the big 3 0, I appreciated hearing from other adults about the big "milestones" and how they either aren't attainable in modern society, or that it is okay to push it off...or simply not want it in the first place.

I might revisit this one in a few years, because I definitely feel off in many areas of my life and this book is a great reminder that having it all together can and should look differently today, than when our parents were our age, and for different people.

This book is extremely relatable as an early thirty-something who doesn’t have kids and has had 3 different career changes. It’s comforting to realize so many others are in similar situations when you feel society has such rigid structure of how life is ‘supposed’ to be, but about halfway through the book the subject got kind of beaten into the ground.

As a thirty something who is not necessarily following the path I had imagined for my life, this book was so reassuring, refreshing, and timely for me.

But You're Still So Young really lays out the ways societal pressure can affect us, and can lead us into thinking we aren't enough, we haven't accomplished enough, and yet we have so much time, or we're "still so young". I grapple with a lot of the themes in this book frequently, and it was really nice to see my own worries and insecurities laid out on paper. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone in their late twenties, all the way through to mid forties.

Did you ever think your life would go according to plan? Did you think you would be approaching age thirty without a career you enjoy, no spouse or children, and no financial stability? What about when you are 32 and find yourself back in your parent's house? I really enjoyed the short stories in this book. The author, Schaefer meets different people in their thirties who are living a life that wasn't in their plans.

This book normalizes unique life paths. It is OK not to get married by 30. It is OK not to have children. It is OK to change careers and do something you love. This book is a mix of short stories and research on society's view points. Definitely worth the read, especially for those having the "Omg should I be doing that?!" thoughts.

I freely admit I'm a Gen Xer. I also freely admit I loved this surprisingly deep dive into what Millennials are facing (on all fronts) as they cross into their 30s, and into that time when being an "adult" isn't just a thing--it is what and who you are. And the reality of it is something that's discussed in a really thoughtful and insightful way. I definitely think there's a huge audience for this, even (or rather, especially) now, and definitely see it as a must-buy for all nonfiction collections. Heck, I enjoyed it so much I bought a copy for myself! Highly recommended.

This book was fascinating. Basically reading everything about myself and my friends and screaming "yaaaasssss" the entire time. There's a huge shift in how thirtysomethings handle themselves from how similar ages did in the past. We're bucking expectations and not everyone is here for it. I loved reading the different persons throughout the book and following on their journey to adulthood. It's a bit more researchy feeling that I really prefer in books, but overall a good read. I still have "Text Me When You Get Home" on my bookshelf, and look forward to the read!

But You're Still So Young by Kayleen Schaefer is an interesting look at what it means to be an individual in their 30s. There are "checklists" or "milestones" people were supposed to meet to determine whether they are an adult. This book takes a different approach, of research and personal stories, of how these "milestones" are harder to achieve than in the past. It is even harder to reach when you consider factors such as race or economic status.

Reading this book, I was grateful that I am past my 30s and have met many of these milestones. I read this book as a pass to throw out all the "expectations" of previous generations.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dutton Books for a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

But You're Still So Young by Kayleen Schaefer is a great read! There is a lot of pressure on adults, particularly as they enter their thirties, to have met certain milestones along the way (finishing school, getting married, leaving home, etc.). In a very easy to read manner, Schaefer breaks down the traditional milestones of adult life and compares modern thirty-year-olds to generations past. This book was well-researched, and I loved that the author included parts of her own story and real-life stories of others interspersed with the research. I think this would be a great read for anyone in their twenties or thirties who may feel that life isn't playing out how it should be, or for anyone ready to change the mindset that thirty is the magical cutoff for achieving arbitrary milestones.

I received an ARC of this title from the publisher via NetGalley which did not affect the contents of my voluntary review. All opinions are honest and my own.

This was a fascinating look at the "rebranding" of being 30-something. Recently there has been a shift both in societal expectations as well as researched-based information that is now looking at this stage of life in a much broader way. For many years, there were milestones that people were "expected" to read once they hit their 30s. These milestones would (unofficially) mark them as "successfully adulting".

So many old standards don't have any place in society today and I am always eager to see these changes in action. Of course, there is nothing wrong with wanting to real certain milestones, but they no longer should feel like requirements and in many ways, they are harder to achieve now than ever before. 30-somethings in today's world have many other pressures that also make some of these goals much harder to reach than even 10/20 or 30 years ago, and this is even harder when you add in one's race, economic status, and more.

I loved the personal aspects that were tied into the narrative that made this not just feel like a textbook-style read. I tend to enjoy non-fiction books that take on the idea that none of us have this figured out, and most of us are just figuring life as we go and found this to be a very interesting book that so many millennial-aged readers will relate to.

Thank you to Dutton Books for my gifted copy in exchange for my honest review.

Hi, my name is Jojo and I’m 36. I make jokes about feeling old or being old lady gang. The truth is I love being 36. I’m the most confident I’ve ever been. And the most secure I’ve ever been. But being in your mid thirties does include a certain oh shit I am def an adult now w a mortgage and a 401k but wait am I a really grown up type of crisis.

When this book was offered to me for review I knew I wanted to crack it open. It goes through what previous generations defined as adulthood with where we are now. Offers some history, social commentary and inserts stories from people on different milestones in life.

If you’re looking for a nonfiction about adulting you would like this. It’s not very long. What I found the most comfort in was that I left here knowing that really no one knows what they’re doing. Cheers!

The twenties have undergone a rebrand. What was once a time when many people settled down and started a family is now a decade of self-discovery in which it’s okay to not be sure of what you want or who you want to be. But the thirties? Our thirtieth birthdays have morphed into a very official-sounding cutoff date: “By thirty, I should be in my dream career. By thirty, I’ll be married with kids. By thirty, I should have my life figured out.” As many of us enter this supposedly steady period of our lives with things still looking jumbled, it seems to beg the question: do the thirties deserve their own overhaul?

In the incredibly readable (and binge-able) “But You’re Still So Young,” journalist and author of Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship, Kayleen Schaefer looks at the thirties as a decade and uses studies as well as personal stories to test whether or not the thirties are the calm waters we desire them to be. Are we truly adults at 30? To test this, the author lays out the traditional milestones of adult life:

1) Finishing school
2) Leaving home
3) Getting married
4) Gaining financial independence
5) Having children

There is a lot of pressure on all of us to accomplish all of these and to have them under our belt if not by our thirtieth birthdays, then sometime within our thirties. And this isn’t just outside pressure: we have lofty expectations of ourselves to check off these boxes, even though they are ideals are largely rooted in the 1950s which fail to recognize the changing world in which we live.

That’s the author’s main purpose in writing this book: showing the thirties not for what they once were or for what they represent from a distance, but for the realities we face when we’re in this decade.

She goes milestone by milestone, citing the differences modern thirty-somethings face that their parents either did not or did to a much lesser degree (see also: a devastating global pandemic, crushing student loan debt, an unforgiving job market, inflated housing prices...I could go on). But she also tells a variety of stories of people in their thirties who are struggling with one or more of the abovementioned milestones for reasons that are often out of their control. These are people from all different backgrounds who are all facing the challenge of being a thirty-something in the modern world.

Schaefer does a great job discussing the problems modern thirty-somethings are facing and the real stories she presents illustrate her points nicely; she even tells her own story throughout the book as she was thirty-nine when she was writing it. Throughout each chapter, her interjections in which she quotes different psychologists and ethnographers to present demonstrable society changes that the personal stories hinted at were extremely helpful, I simply wish there were more of them. I often felt that these personal stories went on too long without the author’s voice highlighting the main takeaways and how they connect to the research.

Being attracted to such a book, I’m obviously a thirty-something myself (I’m in my early thirties as I write this), and I found much of it to be extremely familiar, but also illuminating. It is indeed very difficult to see yourself as an adult when even one facet of your life is left dangling. Whatever part of “complete adulthood” you’re “missing” is absolutely what everyone will want updates on when they speak to you, and it can get exhausting.

It’s high time that the thirties got the same window treatment as the twenties. There’s no magic switch that flips when midnight strikes on your thirtieth birthday and the things you were unsure of at 29 will trail behind you into your thirties like a piece of toilet paper stuck to your shoe. If we can stop speaking about these years as though they’re a finish line and more like what they are: a new era of exploration, we’ll all be much better off. I'm grateful to this book for shining a light on that fact.

Such a great book about the changing sociology and cultural meaning of adulthood; what used to be accomplished in one's twenties is now being delayed into the third decade, if done at all, with almost second adolescence having emerged that has resulted in your 20's being a time dedicated to finding yourself, spreading your wings, and exploring the world, before settling down and creating stability.

Review: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Release Date: March 2,2021

Thank you to Dutton Books for a copy of this for my honest review.

Wow, this book was a great read. It was the second non-fiction I have read and while I don’t typically read them, I feel like this is a book people in the 30s or about to be in their 30s should read. It was typical that in other generations that you were considered an adult if you were married, had a career, owned your own house all by the age of 30. This book not only dives into how this has changed over the last years, but it also talks about the impacts on why things have changed. Some of these reasons being a higher college degree needed in some fields, which leads to increased debts and decreased finical stability. Overall, this book was really eye-opening to me and I really enjoyed reading through this one. I felt it was relatable because I just turned 30 this year and I am still pursuing my master’s degree, so right now I am in a job in a field that does not give me the finical security I would have hoped to have at my age. I think that this is one is something that most people in their 30s can relate to in some way. I also liked how it mentioned the unknowns about where data for this will go in the next few years with the unexpected outcome of COVID. I know for sure COVID has impacted us all and it was interesting to read about it in a book like this