* The Rest of Us by Jessica Lott

For the first two thirds of The Rest of Us, a no-longer-so-young woman pines after an older man, a college professor of hers with who she had a passionate affair while in college. For the last third, the two improbably resume a relationship, at first cautious but soon close, and the author manages to pack a soap opera’s worth of intrigue, including a baby and a death. Critics lauded the book as a second-chance story, which it certainly is, but I found it very challenging to care for the vapid worries of the beginning of the book, and equally challenging to accept the torrent of events in the end, despite the careful and accomplished writing.