Jane Costello’s Forty Love: My July Book Club Pick
Totally Booked with Zibby
Zibby Owens
4.5 • 643 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
I’m obsessed with this novel. Perhaps because I also wrote a book called Forty Love but even though my agent sent it out as the start of the pandemic, it didn’t sell. Which is probably for the best. Jane Costello’s novel is so much better! It’s smart, funny, inspiring, a bit steamy at parts, and page-turning. It centers around a 40-something British woman, a widow, whose only child has just “flown the nest.” She decides to join the local tennis league, where she promptly runs into an old flame. The book is about what happens to her, yes, but it’s really a battle cry on behalf of women, moms in particular, which gives us permission to find joy, find love, and find ourselves again. We also published it!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive |
| 0:24.0 | look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't |
| 0:29.3 | have to. |
| 0:30.3 | Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. |
| 0:36.2 | For more information, go to zibbimedia.com and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. |
| 0:44.6 | Jane Costello is the author of 40 Love, a novel. |
| 0:48.1 | This is actually being published by my publishing company, which we call Zibby Publishing. |
| 0:52.6 | Jane Costello is the author of 16 novels, |
| 0:55.7 | five of which were written under the name Catherine Isaac. Her books have sold over a million |
| 0:59.8 | copies in the UK, have been translated into 26 languages, and have been selected by the Richard |
| 1:04.7 | and Judy Book Club. She has won the Romantic Novelists Award twice. Her last novel, |
| 1:09.8 | It's Getting Hot in Here, was a book of the month's |
| 1:11.8 | selection. Jane was born in Liverpool, England, where she still lives with her husband and |
| 1:16.6 | three sons. By the way, we also published It's Getting Hot in Here. Enjoy. Welcome, Jane. Thanks so |
| 1:21.6 | much for coming on Totally Bucked to talk about 40 Love. Congratulations. Thank you so much. So excited to be here. Jane, this book |
| 1:31.0 | means so much to me on so many levels. One, that I wrote a book called 40 Love that never sold, |
| 1:37.3 | which you know, but this book is far superior to anything I tried to do. And two, because, well, A, also we're publishing it, so that's |
| 1:46.5 | also great. Yes. Happy to do your second book with us. And three, like, I just could not relate |
| 1:52.1 | more. There are so many things in common with this book in my life. And it's funny. And the main |
| 1:58.7 | messages are so resonant and the coexistence of |
| 2:02.1 | of heartbreak and love and all of it like the bigger messages of the book are just absolutely |
| 2:08.0 | beautiful and so important and it's funny and romantic and it's everything and the empty nestor |
... |
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