The Half Life by Jennifer Weiner
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Genre: Women’s Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by Lavender

From Redbook’s Red-Hot Read series, a short story by the New York Times #1 best-selling author of In Her Shoes and Fly Away Home

“My life is over,” Piper DeWitt thinks to herself, awaiting departure in the overcrowded International Terminal of the Philadelphia airport for an overseas business trip, to romantic Paris no less. She watched as her husband, Tosh, put his own suitcase into the trunk of a taxi the day before. He’d been telling her for months that he wasn’t happy, and though she still wants to believe it is just a phase, after a call to her mother from the Admiral’s Club, she can no longer deny that he’s left her, left their home, left their four-year-old daughter in her mother’s sole care.

Piper met Tosh when she was only twenty-two, just the way self help books said she would – when she wasn’t looking. Now at forty, she wonders how, through all those years, they’d gotten to this place in their marriage. When her flight is canceled due to volcanic ash spreading from Iceland across Europe, and when a handsome stranger offers her an invitation to share a cab, she realizes she can take a departure from her own life. And after a day of living like a tourist in her own city, she hopes she can still find her way home…

This quick little story will keep people engaged from beginning to end. Piper DeWitt is a career woman, a family woman, but her husband, Tosh, no longer wants her. Devastated, she prepares to go to Paris on a business trip with Tosh’s break-up note in her pocket. She dreads reading those words, but she’s known for months that his feelings have changed.

Her flight to Paris gets cancelled, and she meets an intriguing man at the airport. After a whirlwind night with him, she takes a deep breath and prepares to face her future without Tosh. Many questions come into play, especially those concerning her daughter. How will Piper get through this heartache? Following along, one will hear her backstory with Tosh as well.

For an entertaining escape, why not check out this short story about a woman trying to make sense of her new present and future? She will have to redefine herself, and surprises are in store.