I Read 4 Books About Horny Menopausal Women—Here’s What I Loved and Hated

• Hot Flash Ranking: 😰😰😰

If you’re looking for an easy, often funny read about the ways our bodies fail us, our past haunts us and our kids surprise (and delight!) us—all with a chill summer beach lull—put this one on your list. Set over the course of a week in Cape Cod, Sandwich tells the story of Rocky, a 50-something matriarch who has decamped to her annual rental house with her husband and two grown children in tow. As Rocky dines on tuna salad and receives visits from her own aging parents, secrets are revealed and desires unfold—things about her pregnancies she’s never shared, choices in her marriage she wishes she’d made differently. The stakes are relatively low—her relationship with her kids and spouse is so good that we never buy it’s at risk—but I found the book pretty charming and affecting nonetheless. Maybe it’s because I have a son and daughter with the same age-gap as the main characters’, but I choked up in places, thinking about the passing of time and how I both am and am not the person I once was.

• Hot Flash Ranking: 😰😰

The only memoir on the list, this one was voyeurism at its very best…until it wasn’t. Things start when the writer—a happily married mother in Brooklyn—finds herself at a bar, flirting with a younger man. When she tells her husband about the interaction, he encourages her to explore it, and thus begins an experiment in dating-while-married that has both spouses swiping in apps, booking hotel rooms and getting themselves into all sorts of sexual situations. Though More was both extremely well-written and compulsively readable, I couldn’t help feeling sad as it chugged along, our narrator perhaps protesting too much about what a good time she’s having. And while I truly tried not to judge, I got hung up in the logistic and financial details—wait, how many babysitters is she booking and what’s the cost of a Manhattan hotel again? All in all, I was left feeling cold by a book that purports to be so steamy.

• Hot Flash Ranking: 😰😰😰😰

I absolutely loved this novel about a 52-year-old divorced mother, Ivy, whose life takes a sharp, obsessive turn when she meets a much younger and formerly incarcerated musician at a friend’s party. Minot perfectly the captures the way infatuation can take hold, but it was the first time I’d read about it through the lens of woman with such decidedly midlife challenges. Ivy is consumed with desire, but her responsibilities to her son, job and home get in the way—and make for an internal conflict I found fascinating and believable. (There is a terrific, later scene set in a hospital during a child’s health scare that had me so invested, I missed my subway stop.) Where More had me questioning logistics, Stranger rang true on every level. I couldn’t put it down.

• Hot Flash Ranking: 😰

You knew this one was coming. The horny lady book of 2024. I will admit there is a lot to like here—July’s captivating and funny prose, candid and empowering descriptions of menopause, interior design porn that would make any wallpaper-enthusiast’s heart swell. But oh my God is it a slough. The novel follows a 45-year-old multi-hyphenate artist who attempts a mind-clearing cross-country drive, before getting sidelined only a few miles from home by an extra-marital affair. And what follows is, well, weird as hell. I am clearly in the minority on this one, as All Fours has been critically acclaimed and was shortlisted for last year’s National Book Award. But ultimately, all the surrealism and graphic descriptions (there’s a kink with a used tampon, for instance) started to feel like a laundry list of shock and made it hard for me to connect with concepts that otherwise interest me. I don’t need a main character that’s likeable, but I’d prefer one who’s not trying to gross me out.