REVIEW: Adulting by Liz Talley

In Adulting by Liz Talley, actress Chase London is on her last chance. After failed attempts at rehab and a parole violation, no one in Hollywood wants to touch her, except for Conrad Santos, who wants her to star in his next movie. To do that she needs to get clean, so he hires his old friend and life coach, Olivia Han.

The last thing Olivia wants is to deal with a spoiled actress who doesn’t want to get clean, but her complicated past with Conrad, along with her deceased sister’s own drug battle, has her agreeing to it. Part of the process is to help Chase find herself, so Olivia brings her to the house she and her other sister inherited from their grandparents. It’s in a small town, so Chase won’t be able to find trouble.

The women have a rocky start to their relationship, but as they learn more about each other, an unlikely friendship begins to develop. While the point of the trip was for Chase to heal, Olivia finds herself unexpectedly finding some healing of her own.

This book deals with some difficult subjects, including drug addiction, suicide, rape, and child abuse. Most of these take place off the pages and I thought the author handled them well and with sensitivity. Still, if these topics are triggers for you, this book might not be for you.

I started off not caring for Chase, but she started to grow on me as the book progressed. The difference between her from the first chapter to the last is night and day, and I liked that readers really get to see her come into her own and grow as a person. Olivia, too, grows as a character. She realizes, with the help of Chase and her sister, Neve, that she needs to take some of the advice she’s been handing out and apply it to herself.

While they’re not the focal point of the story, there is a romance that develops between Chase and one of the locals, Zeke, as well as between Olivia and Chase’s friend, actor Spencer Rome. I thought adding these into the story provided a nice break from all the hard topics that were being dealt with. Olivia comes across as a bit uptight at times, and her relationship with Spencer shows a different, lighter side of her.

Adulting is a story about facing the past, learning to forgive oneself, healing, and finding friendship in the least expected place. It runs the emotional gamut, from lows to highs. I would recommend it to readers who enjoy contemporary or women’s fiction and don’t mind a book that deals with heavy topics.

Book Info:

Publication: April 1, 2021 | Montlake |

After another all-night bender, one more failed stint at rehab, and a parole violation, self-destructive actress Chase London has to deal with her demons. She’s been written off as a Hollywood casualty by almost everyone, including her own mother. But handsome superstar Spencer Rome has her back. So does an uncompromising stranger determined to start Chase at square one and help her pull her future into focus. If Chase is willing.

Life coach Olivia Han is devoted to “adulting” boot camp therapy. It’s not just her professional specialty, though—it’s also one way to avoid focusing on building a life of her own. To escape the pressures of Tinseltown, the two women head to Olivia’s cabin in the wilds of Northern California. There they discover a place in need of TLC. As they work together to rehab the once-charming cabin, they create a refuge where Chase can come to terms with her unsettled past, and where Olivia has an unexpected reckoning with her own troubling history.

For two women doing damage control, this is a time for second chances—in life, in finding love, in forgiving family, and in an emerging friendship that might be exactly what each of them needs to heal.