A Last Time For Everything by Evan Porter

First off – Evan Porter, the author, is a good friend of mine who I’ve known for years. I also reviewed his debut novel, Dad Camp, which was awesome and pairs well with this one. I would say this is a disclosure of bias…except that it is absolutely not. Why? Well, since I’ve known Evan for so long (and worked with him on various projects), I can actually say that he puts in the work, time, and attention to make a novel that is memorable & worth reading.

Evan also has a specific skill that I think is genuinely rare, and A Last Time for Everything is the second book in a row where he’s pulled it off.

Here’s the skill – he writes about the the stuff of everyday, lived life that is so relatable, so ordinary, and so constant that we look straight past it. And then he shows you that the ordinary thing you were looking past was actually the most important thing you were doing.

There’s a well-known line from John Lennon about how life is the thing that happens while you’re busy making other plans. I’ve always liked the sentiment but found it a little too tidy. Evan’s version is messier and better. Life isn’t one dramatic thing you missed while you were distracted. It’s a long string of everydays, and you’re in the middle of it right now, and you will not notice until it’s over.

The Premise

A Last Time for Everything follows Arthur and Ren, a couple who have spent their adult lives putting Things off. They’re putting off the…you know – the experiences, the people, the non-routine wants, the “we should definitely do that” ideas. Not in a lazy way – in the very normal, very 2020s way where there is always a reasonable-sounding argument for waiting a little longer…until there’s a little more money, a little more time, a little less hassle, or a little more certainty.

Then they’re expecting a baby.

A baby is the ultimate forcing function. It’s a hard deadline that doesn’t negotiate, doesn’t slip, and doesn’t care what you had planned. Every “we’ll get to it eventually” in Arthur and Ren’s life suddenly has a due date attached.

What I Liked

The forcing function structure. Setting a novel against a pregnancy is a great structural choice. There’s a countdown built into the premise, so even in the quiet stretches – there’s forward pressure. You always know roughly how much time is left.

The social dynamics. This is the part I keep thinking about. Evan is very good on the specific texture of adult life in 2020s America – the friendships that are drifting, the friendships that are somehow tightening, the career that is always dominating, the housing & healthcare costs that are always looming, the way spouses negotiate with each other, and the absolutely relentless set of expectations around parenting. There’s a version of this book that turns all of that into satire. But the book leans into it all and it works.

Arthur and Ren are actual people. They disagree in ways that made me wince a little because I recognized them. Neither one is the reasonable one. Neither one is the problem.

It moves. I read it fast. It’s a fun book, which feels like a weird thing to say about a novel that is fundamentally about running out of time, but it is.

What I Did Not Like

The relatability is the whole engine of the book, which means how much you get out of it probably depends on where you are in life. I’m a Millennial parent to two kids. I’ve lived a solid chunk of what Arthur and Ren are walking into. Reading it felt like someone describing my own last two decades back to me with better sentences.

I’m genuinely not sure it hits the same for someone twenty years older or ten years younger. That’s not a flaw exactly – Dad Camp had the same quality – but it’s worth knowing going in. This is a book that finds you at a particular moment or it doesn’t.

Wrap Up

I’m not going to get into where the book ends up, because the whole point of a book like this is watching it get there.

If you liked Dad Camp, this is a natural next read – same instincts, tighter focus. Where Dad Camp was about parenthood as a going concern, A Last Time for Everything is about the couple standing right at the edge of it. Excellent read.

A Last Time for Everything: A Novel

$12.99

Evan Porter's A Last Time for Everything follows Arthur and Ren, a couple who've spent years putting things off until a baby arrives as the ultimate forcing function. It's a fast, observant novel about the social dynamics of 2020s American life - drifting friendships, spousal negotiation, and relentless parenting expectations. Like Dad Camp, it finds the important thing hiding inside the ordinary one.

Pros:

Pregnancy-as-countdown gives the book real forward pressure, even in quiet stretches
Sharp, straight-played observation of modern friendships, marriage, and parenting expectations
Arthur and Ren both feel like actual people; neither is "the reasonable one"

Cons: