The Thirty Something Snap by Alan Helgasson

The Thirty Something Snap is a romantic comedy about 39 year old Howard Perkins. Howard is a divorced public relations agent working in New York City and living on Long Island. His reluctance and resistance to indulge in frivolous, but life enhancing, temptations is due to his conviction that people in their thirties, especially men, engage in uncharacteristic and often embarrassing behaviors. Despite Howard's convictions he, nevertheless, finds himself participating in the things he considers evidence of what he has called "the thirty something snap." The big revelation for Howard is that the behaviors he is resisting will actually enrich his life and even reward him with the one thing he craves the most: love. A cast of characters surrounding Howard serve to simultaneously illustrate and contradict his theory about the thirty something snap. As the story unfolds Howard finds himself reconnecting with longtime friends for a reunion of the rock band they were all in together twenty years earlier. Unfulfilled dreams and fantasies drive the often quirky behaviors of Howard and his friends. Meanwhile, old fears of dating and romance surface causing strife and frustration for Howard who is desperate to achieve a normal life before he reaches the age of forty.