- Title: Peg, Unhinged
- Author: Teri M. Brown
- Where to buy: Amazon (affiliate link)
- Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Humor
- Would I recommend: Definitely! This book is a hoot, and absolutely relatable if you’re a woman of a certain age.
Book Description:
A humorous beach read of midlife, menopause and metamorphosis.
Peg is good at a lot of things. Selling beachfront homes. Raising two kids. Holding her life together with duct tape and dark humor. What she is not good at is menopause, divorce, or watching her soon-to-be ex flirt with women half her age, especially when one of them works in her office.
As hot flashes, brain fog, and emotional landmines take over, Peg finds herself unraveling in increasingly hilarious and inconvenient ways. Her kids are drifting away. Her marriage is in ruins. Her once-unshakable confidence is cracking. And yet, somewhere between a screaming meltdown on the beach and a disastrous real estate showing, Peg starts to realize something unexpected: this breakdown might also be a breakthrough.
Funny, raw, and deeply relatable, Teri M Brown explores midlife, reinvention, and what happens when a woman finally stops holding it all together—and starts becoming herself.
I’ve read Teri M. Brown’s historical fiction and memoir, and I loved them (see my reviews here). As far as I’m aware, this is her first foray into contemporary fiction, and surprise! I loved it, too!
Peg McMann thought she had her life all together. Until she didn’t. Her body seems to be conspiring against her, with hot flashes and brain fog making everything harder than it ought to be. Her children no longer want to speak to her. Her soon-to-be-ex is carrying on with younger women in the guise of being a dance instructor. One of those women is her co-worker, Kayla, and when Kayla swipes a lucrative real estate deal out from under Peg, it’s the last straw. Peg snaps in a very public way, and in short order, she’s been fired from her job, taken up day drinking, and found herself slapped with a DUI when she had to make a run to the store for more wine. And the friends she thought were ride or die proved themselves to be more of the fair-weather variety. Peg’s life is falling apart, and she isn’t sure how to regain some measure of control!
Oh, y’all, I could relate to Peg. While I haven’t ever been plagued by horrible hot flashes, I’ve had those moments of brain fog (“Why did I walk into this room? What did I think of three seconds ago that I wanted to Google, and now I can’t remember it?”) and completely irrational irritation with something or someone.
At first, Peg is a comedy of errors. Nothing she does turns out right. I understand that, too – can’t tell you how many times I’ve said, “It seemed like a good idea at the time” about something that’s just gone pear-shaped. But slowly, the tide begins to turn. She makes a new friend, one who really understands and encourages her. Serving at the women’s shelter, she sees opportunities, not just to better her own situation, but to provide an opportunity for another woman to rise. She realizes that perhaps her life isn’t rock bottom and that she’s still got plenty of living to do. She even sees the door open on the possibility of a new romance!
The book is by turns hilarious, painful, and inspiring. It isn’t billed as Christian fiction, but there are interludes between chapters where Peg talks to God. She tells Him exactly what she thinks, and I think that little thread of faith sometimes sustains Peg! I’ve prayed some prayers like Peg’s on occasion, too. If you can’t be straight-up honest with God the Father, who can you be honest with, right?
Peg, Unhinged is lovely and relatable and a lot of fun even when I’m glad some of those things are happening to Peg and not me! Teri M. Brown has another winner here, and I highly recommend it to women who’ve lived through menopause or who will live through it one day.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the author. I was not required to leave a review. All opinions here are mine, and I don’t say nice things about books I don’t actually like.
About the Author
Born in Athens, Greece as an Air Force brat, Teri M Brown graduated from UNC Greensboro with a multitude of degrees – majors in Elementary Education and Psychology and minors in Math and Sociology – she just couldn’t settle on one thing! While homeschooling her four children, she began her writing career by focusing on small businesses, writing articles, blog posts, and website content. She published five nonfiction self-help books dealing with real estate and finance, receiving several awards. In 2017, Teri began dabbling in fiction, a lifelong dream. Upon winning the First Annual Anita Bloom Ornoff Award for Inspirational Short Story for a piece about her grandfather, she began writing in earnest, and published her debut novel in 2022, Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, a historical fiction set in Ukraine, which has won 12 awards. Her second novel published in 2023, An Enemy Like Me, takes place during WWII, winning 27. Her third, Daughters of Green Mountain Gap, a generational story about Appalachian healers, came out in January 2024 and has won 23 awards. 10 Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure (Feb 2025) is an inspirational look at the life lessons she learned riding across the United States on a tandem bicycle. Little Lola and Her Big Dream is a children’s picture book helping children realize that it is okay to have big dreams even in the face of opposition. Her newest work, Peg, Unhinged (April 2026), is a humorous contemporary women’s fiction looking at menopause. Teri is a wife, mother, grandmother, and author who loves word games, reading, bumming on the beach, taking photos, singing in the shower, hunting for bargains, ballroom dancing, playing bridge, and mentoring others – especially youth and women who are having trouble discovering their worth. Learn more at www.terimbrown.com.
