Thanks for Waiting

Starred review from July 5, 2021
Shafrir (Startup), a former BuzzFeed editor and cohost of the Forever35 podcast, delivers a heartwarming and witty account of how she figured it out—“whatever ‘it’ is”—on her own terms. “On the night I turned thirty,” she writes, “I was... drunk on cheap beer and too-strong vodka sodas in plastic cups.” Shafrir’s peers, on the other hand, were already solidly on the path to “Real Adult Life,” going to bed early and getting married “at the stroke of twenty-seven.” In a culture obsessed with milestones, Shafrir struggled with feeling left behind. But rather than mourning what some may deem a squandered youth, she looks back fondly on her “late” arrival to professional success, marriage, and motherhood. She reflects on working in media in the mid-aughts as a 29-year-old intern, navigating Tinder in her 30s, becoming one of BuzzFeed’s first editors at age 35 (“the Rubicon that, once crossed, women shriveled up and became crones living forgotten and alone”), and eventually getting married at age 38 and having a kid three years later. While Shafrir’s droll sarcasm is perfectly calibrated, it’s her vulnerability and writing about more difficult experiences—such as her struggle with infertility—that will keep readers rapt. This coming-of-age story raises the bar.