Plan B

Turning thirty was never supposed to be like this. Ten years ago, Ben, Lindsey, Chuck, Alison, and Jack graduated from NYU and went out into the world, fresh-faced and full of dreams for the future. But now Ben's getting a divorce, Lindsey's unemployed, Alison and Chuck seem stuck in ruts of their own making, and Jack is getting more publicity for his cocaine addiction than his multimillion-dollar Hollywood successes. Suddenly, turning thirty - past the age their parents were when they were born, older than every current star athlete or pop music sensation - seems to be both more meaningful and less than they'd imagined ten years ago.

Jonathan Tropper's wonderful debut novel is about more than friendship, love, celebrity, addiction, kidnapping, or even turning thirty - it's a heartfelt comic riff on what it means to be an adult against your will, to be single when you thought you'd have a family, to discover you are not in fact immortal, and to learn that "Star Wars" is as good a life lesson today as it was when you were six years old.