July 2026 Book Club Pick: ‘Adulting for Amateurs: Misadventures of a Geriatric Millennial’ by Jess H. Gutierrez
Join us July 23 at 8:30 p.m. ET for a live interview about aging as a millennial, motherhood, dating as a queer woman, and writing with author Jess H. Gutierrez
Our July 2026 Open Secrets Book Club pick is Adulting for Amateurs: Misadventures of a Geriatric Millennial by Jess H. Gutierrez. Publisher Tiny Reparations Books calls it “a rowdy and hilarious new collection of essays on life as an elder millennial, filled with life lessons on everything from marriage to parenting to rolling with the punches when Gen Z mocks your TikTok dances.” We wanted to bring some humor to your summer reading while still sharing essays that are thought-provoking, whatever age or generation the reader.
Join us in the Open Secrets Magazine chat to discuss the book, and for a Q&A with Jess on Thursday, July 23 at 8:30 p.m. ET on Substack Live, which you can watch in the Substack app or on desktop. Click here for a reminder; Open Secrets subscribers will be notified when we go live. Please bring your own questions for Jess, which we will ask as time permits. The discussion will be recorded and posted for anyone who can’t attend live.
Below you’ll find an exclusive note from Jess H. Gutierrez, purchase links for the book, which you can also check out or request at your local library, and more info about what to expect.
A note from Jess H. Gutierrez
Hi! I’m Jess H. Gutierrez and I’m beyond excited to introduce you to Adulting for Amateurs. This book is a mess in all the best ways a mess can be a mess. It’s a work straight from my heart and I’m so glad that you’ve taken a chance on it. This is the long version of me, a perpetual stumbler, to say thank you.
Adulting is a funny collection of essays about being a grown-up when it often feels like I missed a step. Suffice it to say, if I had a coming-of-age moment, I slept through it. But here I am, alongside so many of my generation, adulting the best I can (most days).
I was inspired to write this book because I truly believe that we all have stories to tell and that though the details may look different, so many of us have shared experiences tied to pop culture and the age we were raised in. We are a quirky product of the age that brought us up.
We were club kids in sparkly one shoulder tops who now hold full time jobs while we balance kids on our hips while figuring out insurance deductibles. We’re the adults at the helm now, but sometimes we wonder if we should be.
Happy reading. I am so proud to have my book featured by Open Secrets and can’t wait to join you for a live chat about all things ridiculous, memoir, and comedy in July!
Where to buy Adulting for Amateurs
Ebook
Audiobook
About Adulting for Amateurs
In Adulting for Amateurs, Jess H. Gutierrez marvels at how—we can’t avoid the fact anymore—her cohort, the millennials, are approaching middle age. While 1998 seems like just yesterday, we are now grown-ups who feel like we’re still growing up. And at forty-two, Jess has quite a trove of stories to tell.
Jess is leaning into her geriatric millennial years and reflects on how growing up does not necessarily bestow one with maturity. When the dinner covers were lifted to reveal vertically posed sausages, hundreds of the fanciest wedding guests, including the mayor, were treated to a demure and refined Jess’s explosive guffaws. While Jess’s brothers now have wholesome families and responsible jobs, she can’t stop one-upping them, even if it gets her brother nearly fired by a potty-brained prank right before he scrubs into surgery. When Jess and her wife booked their first grown-up vacation, they discovered too late that their Hawaiian trip was to a Mormon resort and therefore completely alcohol free. So Jess and her wife bravely put on their big-girl panties—and slunk off in a makeshift escape from this cheerful teetotaler paradise.
Turns out, even as a responsible homeowner with a mortgage, three kids, and a yard of chickens, Jess might not have matured much beyond her twenties. She’s still the woman who in an earlier era survived queer-dating fails and aughts-era pop culture moments—ultimately discovering that an illegal rave cannot heal a broken heart and that vampire-romance franchises are terrible dating manuals for a budding trailer park lesbian.
Altogether these are the makings of delightful material for this bawdy—sometimes poignant and, dare we say, occasionally wise—new read.
What people are saying about Adulting for Amateurs
“As a (possibly geriatric) millennial, Adulting for Amateurs blew me away. Jess’s big personality and honesty shine through in this collection of essays, and I laughed with every page turn.”
—Busy Philipps, New York Times bestselling author of This Will Only Hurt a Little"In Adulting for Amateurs, Jess Gutierrez has gifted old-ass millennials with a collection of laugh-out-loud essays clowning our shared cultural touchstones. Packed with early 2000's-nostalgia, wild escapades, and delightful dirty jokes (with a few hard-won pearls of wisdom sprinkled on top), Adulting for Amateurs is a hilarious time capsule of the way we were—filtered through Jess's insane (complimentary) comedic voice."
—Caitlin Kunkel, co-author of Inside Jokes and New Erotica for Feminists“With self-deprecating humor, Gutierrez, who was born in 1984, unpacks the bewildering experience of becoming the adult in the room regardless of feeling mature enough for the job... Wincingly relatable.”
—Publishers Weekly
About Jess H. Gutierrez
Jess H. Gutierrez is the author A Product of Genetics (and Day Drinking) and a humor columnist for Paxton Media Group newspapers. She was an award-winning reporter for the Northwest Arkansas Times and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and has written for Out magazine and Electric Literature. She lives with her wife, a fire captain, and three small kids who have already surpassed Jess in both intellect and cunning. They live in Arkansas.
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