The Panic Years: A Guide to Surviving Smug Married Friends, Bad Taffeta, and Life on the Wrong Side of 25 without a Ring [Hardcover]

Doree Lewak (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 2008

Have you ever found yourself thinking, “If one more friend gets engaged I’m going to scream”?

Do the words taffeta and crinoline make you break into a cold sweat?

Does reading the wedding announcements section in the newspaper induce outright hyperventilation?

If so, congratulations! You’ve hit the Panic Years.

According to author Doree Lewak, the Panic Years mark the point (usually around your twenty-sixth birthday) when your dating agenda fundamentally changes—from dating for a fling to dating for a ring. Suddenly your newly married friends feel more like enemies, weddings become mocking reminders of your own single status, and you contemplate going on a reality TV show to find true love. What’s a girl to do?

In The Panic Years, Lewak delivers a hilarious and helpful road map for conquering the Panic and finding Mr. Right. As Lewak shows, you can win the race to the altar by changing your tactics from Panicked to Proactive—and keeping your sense of humor along the way. You will learn how to:

Cope with Panic by Proxy—pushy friends and parents.
Successfully hunt for PFs (Potential Fiancés).
Project hotness and desirability.
Set—and stick to—dating time lines.
Avoid being bitter at your friends’ weddings—and ruining all their pictures with that scowl on your face.
Get the ring and the proposal and seal the deal!

Packed with true-life stories from the Panic trenches as well as indispensable advice, The Panic Years is the ultimate guide for anyone who wants to survive her single years (with sanity intact), snag her perfect guy, and remain fabulous throughout it all.

You know you’re in the Panic Years when:

Your mom slips you the number of her tennis partner’s son … for the fifth time.
You’ve walked down the aisle dozens of times—just not as a bride.
Your “concerned friends” chip in for a subscription to Match.com for your birthday.
It’s down to you and the five-year-old flower girl at the bouquet toss.
Upon hearing “Guess what? I’m engaged!” for the second time in one week, you disconnect your phone.
You actively scheme to win back your ex—even though he’s already engaged to someone else.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Reading lines like Sure, most couples are ill suited and unhappy, but so the hell what? At least they're married! it will be tough for enlightened readers of Newsday trend reporter Lewak's handbook not to go on the defensive. Lewak, self-described Potential Fiancé predator, tries to convince women over 25 that if they're not feeling alarmed about their unmarried state, they're living in la-la land. Still, the voice throughout is so breezy and fun that readers will cross their fingers that Lewak is kidding. And it seems that she is. She eventually puts aside all the usual and necessary jokes about smug married friends and hideous bridal wear, her final lesson apparently that you shouldn't lose yourself in that quest for a fairy tale ending. After chapters on mind games and subterfuge that will help women in their quest for the ring, the book develops a cautionary attitude, warning readers against settling for whatever comes along in their desperation, and asserting that one can be happy as a single, swingin' lady. This is fortunate, because it's hard to hate a book that provides so many laughs. (Mar. 18)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“The Panic Years brings cheeky humor, style, and insights to a sharp new set of ‘rules’ for single women. I loved it.”
—Dave Singleton, relationship columnist for MSN and Match.com, and author of Behind Every Woman There’s a Fabulous Gay Man

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Crown Archetype (March 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767925998
• ISBN-13: 978-0767925990
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,168,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A full-time writer in Manhattan, I'm the quintessential New Yorker who thrives on the sizzle of the city.

My areas of interest are relationships and dating. My new book "The Panic Years" has just been released, bringing relief to scores of single women on the verge of losing their sanity!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Witty but disappointing with a misleading title, September 19, 2008

By 

Sunshine Angel (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Panic Years: A Guide to Surviving Smug Married Friends, Bad Taffeta, and Life on the Wrong Side of 25 without a Ring (Hardcover)

I really was hoping this would be more a book about celebrating being single despite the fact that your friends are all getting married. Instead, I felt like the title of this book should've been Man-Trap. This is nothing about 'surviving' being single, it's about how to join the marriage club using every trick in the book. I HATE giving books a bad review, and I rarely ever do but I was extremely disappointed. It basically tells women to stop being so picky, which to some extent I can understand but then the entire second half of the book is about getting your boyfriend to propose with tactics...maybe I'm naive, but really? You have to use tactics? What kind of guy are you marrying then anyway? The only reason I gave this book two stars is because I think the author is a good writer, very funny, and witty but everything she wrote about is exactly what I don't want to hear. I don't want to stop being so picky, I want to celebrate the fact that I'm strong enough to have high standards and enjoy my independence and if a man fits into that picture then that's great, but if not, that's okay too. I thought this book would be more empowering and basically tell me it's okay to be single even though it feels horrible as everyone around you is getting married but it actually only made me more depressed that this is what dating and marriage has come to. If this is the type of book you're looking for, one that tells you how to snag a guy and get him to propose, then maybe you'll enjoy this book, although if that's the case, I think you're better off reading "The Rules."

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic book, I needed it three years ago, June 15, 2008

By 

Edie "Dirty Harriet" (Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Panic Years: A Guide to Surviving Smug Married Friends, Bad Taffeta, and Life on the Wrong Side of 25 without a Ring (Hardcover)

Although it took my a few days..I read this book all the way through and thought, this is "the" book for single women. I know how I felt, exactly as the author describes, right at 27 and realizing I wasn't meeting men "automatically" anymore and that the number of women my age sporting rings and showing pregnancy bumps was getting higher. Also the strategies Ms Lewak includes in the book for Closing the Deal were great. The chapters are so spot-on about our lives it's not funny.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An instant dating classic!, March 23, 2008

By 

FrummyMummy (Queens, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Panic Years: A Guide to Surviving Smug Married Friends, Bad Taffeta, and Life on the Wrong Side of 25 without a Ring (Hardcover)

The Panic Years is an invaluable addition to any single person's (guy or girl) reading survival kit! Ms. Lewak is refreshingly honest in her assessment of the 20-something dating scene, and her anecdotes and analogies are hilarious, yet poignant. There's also plenty of good, practical advice on how to cope with those who insist on making one feel somewhat inferior because of their marital (or lack thereof) status. One cannot help but feel significantly uplifted by Ms. Lewak's ultimately positive and upbeat literary style.