Fifty in Reverse

A Novel

By: Bill Flanagan

Narrated by: Michael Crouch

From TV personality and radio host Bill Flanagan comes a “funny and sharp” (Rosanne Cash, Grammy Award–winning singer/songwriter and bestselling author) time-traveling adventure novel about how the past never gives up its hold on the present and how even sixty-five-year-olds are still kids at heart.

If you had the chance to live your life over again, knowing everything that you know now, would you take it? Would you still take it if it meant losing everything you had today? Would a second chance to correct every mistake and missed opportunity be worth giving up the world you know and the life you have built? In Fifty in Reverse, fifteen-year-old Peter Wyatt does just that.

In the spring of 1970, Harvard psychologist Terry Canyon is introduced to Peter, a quiet kid from a wealthy family who has been suspended from ninth grade for stripping off his clothes in Algebra class. When Terry asks Peter why he did, the boy explains that he was trying to “shock myself awake.” It turns out that Peter believes he is a sixty-five-year-old man who went to sleep in his home in New York in the year 2020 and woke up in his childhood bedroom fifty years earlier.

Hilariously depicting Peter’s attempts to fit in as a fifteen-year-old in 1970 and to cope with the tedium, foolishness, and sexual temptations of high school as he tries to retain the sense of himself as a sixty-five-year-old man, Fifty in Reverse is a thought-provoking and enlightening novel about second chances and appreciating where you are in life.

Critic reviews

"Who has not stared at a darkened bedroom ceiling and fantasized about what they would do if they could live life over? To the hero of this audiobook, Peter Wyatt, this is a reality. One day, the 65-year-old man wakes up in the body of himself at age 15 in 1970. Narrator Michael Crouch sounds like a desperate yet earnest teenager who is equipped with decades of knowledge of coming events. He can do anything, but all he wants is a way to get his old life back. He introduces songs stolen from 'future' songwriters as his own and half-heartedly tries to break into the music business while trying to find the girl who would someday be his wife. It's a fascinating work that will make listeners consider what they would do if given the chance to rewrite their lives."

First half is great, then it’s a train crash. Really disappointing.

This book had a lot of potential, but it was like the author gave up at some point, and decided just to wrap it up. I would not recommend this book to anyone.

Enjoyable listen

Well written book that puts a different spin on time travel. I recommend this book very much

not a long story, but a good one

good story. some good character depth but not a lot of explanation for the time travel part

If you love Replay you should enjoy this

Great quick read. Keeps you listening and gives you that “life redo” content you crave. The narration is on point as well.

Gripping story well told

What if. What if you would be born with your knowledge of today some 50 years ago. A different view on how this plays out and makes one think.