Reviews in the "New York Times Book Review", "Washington Post", and elsewhere, were overall positive. The "New York Times" "Modern Love" column published the first serial excerpt on April 23, 2017 as "To Stay Married, Embrace Change." The book was featured on "Today". In the "By the Book" column of "The New York Times Book Review", Tom Hanks replied to the question "What was the last book that made you laugh?" with: "Ada Calhoun’s 'Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give.' I mean, underlining and yellow marker bust-out laughs." "" is a nonfiction book by Calhoun about Generation X women and their struggles, sometimes leading to a midlife crisis, including divorce, debt, unstable housing, and career development. It builds upon her popular essay for "O, The Oprah Magazine", "The New Midlife Crisis for Women". Calhoun interviewed more than 200 women across America about their experiences and was fascinated how Gen-X women responded and coped with these struggles physically and mentally, inspiring her to understand why with research from the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Harvard’s Equality of Opportunity Project. The book was released on January 7, 2020 by Grove Atlantic. Reviews have been mixed. "The New York Times Book Review"’s Curtis Sittenfeld called Calhoun "a funny, smart, compassionate narrator…taking women’s concerns seriously" but also "wished Calhoun had included fewer women’s stories but gone into those stories in greater detail." "The Wall Street Journal"'s Emily Bobrow gave the book mixed reviews, finding "many of its grumbles reassuringly familiar" but calling the book "a little whiny" and stating that Calhoun is "not above cherry-picking statistics." The book had a 3.86/5 rating on Goodreads . Calhoun won the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Award gold medal in U.S. History, 2015 USC-Annenberg National Health Journalism Fellowship, 2014 Kiplinger fellowship, 2013 Council on Contemporary Families Media Award, and 2014 Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship; one of her Patterson stories won the 2015 Croly Award. In 2004, Calhoun married Jerry Neal Medlin, who performs as Neal Medlyn and Champagne Jerry, whom she met when she was sent to interview him for an "Austin Chronicle" profile. They have one son together, Oliver. She is an advocate for libraries. She majored in Plan II Honors at the University of Texas at Austin, where for her senior thesis she translated part of the Sanskrit Atharvaveda.