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Living Expenses
As the children to a single mother who immigrated from the Philippines, Laura and Claire have always been exceptionally close. Told from the perspective of Laura, Living Expenses is about a point of divergence in the sisters’ Claire has moved to San Francisco for a startup job in Silicon Valley while Laura and her husband, Joe, remain in Toronto and decide to start a family. Laura quickly encounters issues and begins the slow process of fertility treatments. Meanwhile, Claire gets involved in a venture that taps into the fertility industry. Living Expenses interrogates the strain that can accompany even the strongest of relationships, and captures the inevitable creep of technology into all facets of its characters’ lives, from communication to reproduction.
- GenresFiction
320 pages, Paperback
Published May 13, 2025
3 people are currently reading
114 people want to read
About the author
Teri Vlassopoulos
3 books42 followersTeri Vlassopoulos is the author of the award-nominated short story collection, "Bats or Swallows" (2010), and a new novel, "Escape Plans" (2015). Her fiction has appeared in Room Magazine, Joyland, Little Fiction, and various other North American journals. She is the cookbook columnist for Bookslut, and has had non-fiction published at The Toast, The Millions and the Rumpus. She lives in Toronto.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 12, 2025
There is a moment in the opening scene of Teri Vlassopoulos’ Living Expenses that I connected to so directly that it inspired a brief shock that anyone else had ever had the same thought or the same feeling about such a specific situation. In the scene, we meet our narrator Laura, her younger sister Claire and their mother as they lounge around the house on Christmas Day. Laura makes note of the fact that despite their current lazy Christmas morning tradition as adults, it hasn’t always been their pastime while growing up with a single mother and yet both women have in many ways retroactively altered their memories of childhood holidays to resemble something closer to what you might see on a sitcom special sometime in late December.
When I began going back home for Christmas as an adult, I found myself pining for traditions that I later realized couldn’t have come from my own lived experiences with my parents and instead likely came from some desire to act out a degree of things that I had witnessed on television or in any of the many holiday films that I tend to gorge on in the final months of every year. When I myself became a parent, an entirely new layer of this subconscious desire to alter traditions took hold of me in new and bizarre ways as I found myself attempting to push a level of tradition into our holiday routines that I was not privy to as a child myself.
At it’s core, Living Expenses is a story about motherhood, or rather, more accurately, an attempt at motherhood. Early on in it’s introductory pages, Laura, just at the precipice of her early 30s and married to her longtime high school sweetheart, discovers that without trying, she is pregnant with what would be her and her husband Joe’s first child. Unfortunately, before the couple is even at a point where they feel comfortable sharing their news with family and friends, Laura goes through a frustrating and soul-depleting miscarriage. From here on out, we follow the ups and the significantly more plentiful downs of Laura and Joe as they attempt to conceive their first child, this time on purpose.
Along the way, in a span of eight seasons (two years for those of you that aren’t seasonally inclined in the way that you measure the passage of time), Laura finds herself singularly focused on the desire to become pregnant as she enters a world of smartphone tracking apps, thermometers and frequent and often unromantic sex with her husband all in the name of increasing her chances of being in that sweet spot of perfect fertility that could spawn a new life.
But surrounding Laura at the same time, her family’s life is also moving forward in new directions, often without her direct knowledge until she finds the space to give them attention. Her younger sister Claire makes the move from their shared hometown of Toronto to work for a tech company in Silicon Valley that laid out the red carpet for her. Her mother, now in her 60s, makes the snap decision to start using online dating apps and eventually meets a man that she begins to see regularly. Even Laura’s husband, a lawyer, finds that a podcast that he hosts with his best friend is growing in success and adding to his already heavy workload.
And this is where Living Expenses becomes significantly more than a story that just focuses on Laura’s desire to become a mother. As she is in the process of attempting to grow the family that she has created with Joe, Laura begins to realize how much the family that she grew up with and felt a stability with is changing and evolving in ways that don’t necessarily vibe with her current life or even her current goals. Both her mother and her younger sister have long been the rocks that she can cling to for love and support and as each of them begin to find new avenues in life that pull their time, attention and even their care away, Laura finds herself a bit more than unmoored as the processes that she and Joe are going through in order to conceive are not only unsuccessful, but are also depleting her resolve and challenging her sense of who she is.
Teri has created a gorgeously written novel that is extremely careful at showing not just what someone attempting to have a child goes through when things don’t go according to plan, but also the toll that it can take on everyone else involved as they attempt to be supportive and loving in a situation that is remarkably sensitive and personal. While it is most assuredly a story that revolves around what it means to be a family, it definitely does not shy away from revealing the difficulties, the frustration and the pain that many people go through in order to conceive a child and how frightening and financially draining the cost can be when medical specialists and invasive procedures come into play.
The characters that make up Living Expenses are written in such a way that they immediately feel familiar to you as if all of these people already exist somewhere amongst your circle of friends or somewhere in your own family. The relationship between Laura and her sister Claire is particularly hilarious and incredibly moving in ways that had me pining for an alternate childhood where I hadn’t been an only child. Watching as they traverse the chaotic narrative that comes with being a family is both entertaining and heart-wrenching at times, causing you to feel immediately protective of what they all go through over the course of this emotional rollercoaster of a story.
Thank you to both Invisible Publishing and River Street Writes for gifting me a copy of Teri’s wonderful novel and allowing me the chance to read it in advance of it’s release.
When I began going back home for Christmas as an adult, I found myself pining for traditions that I later realized couldn’t have come from my own lived experiences with my parents and instead likely came from some desire to act out a degree of things that I had witnessed on television or in any of the many holiday films that I tend to gorge on in the final months of every year. When I myself became a parent, an entirely new layer of this subconscious desire to alter traditions took hold of me in new and bizarre ways as I found myself attempting to push a level of tradition into our holiday routines that I was not privy to as a child myself.
At it’s core, Living Expenses is a story about motherhood, or rather, more accurately, an attempt at motherhood. Early on in it’s introductory pages, Laura, just at the precipice of her early 30s and married to her longtime high school sweetheart, discovers that without trying, she is pregnant with what would be her and her husband Joe’s first child. Unfortunately, before the couple is even at a point where they feel comfortable sharing their news with family and friends, Laura goes through a frustrating and soul-depleting miscarriage. From here on out, we follow the ups and the significantly more plentiful downs of Laura and Joe as they attempt to conceive their first child, this time on purpose.
Along the way, in a span of eight seasons (two years for those of you that aren’t seasonally inclined in the way that you measure the passage of time), Laura finds herself singularly focused on the desire to become pregnant as she enters a world of smartphone tracking apps, thermometers and frequent and often unromantic sex with her husband all in the name of increasing her chances of being in that sweet spot of perfect fertility that could spawn a new life.
But surrounding Laura at the same time, her family’s life is also moving forward in new directions, often without her direct knowledge until she finds the space to give them attention. Her younger sister Claire makes the move from their shared hometown of Toronto to work for a tech company in Silicon Valley that laid out the red carpet for her. Her mother, now in her 60s, makes the snap decision to start using online dating apps and eventually meets a man that she begins to see regularly. Even Laura’s husband, a lawyer, finds that a podcast that he hosts with his best friend is growing in success and adding to his already heavy workload.
And this is where Living Expenses becomes significantly more than a story that just focuses on Laura’s desire to become a mother. As she is in the process of attempting to grow the family that she has created with Joe, Laura begins to realize how much the family that she grew up with and felt a stability with is changing and evolving in ways that don’t necessarily vibe with her current life or even her current goals. Both her mother and her younger sister have long been the rocks that she can cling to for love and support and as each of them begin to find new avenues in life that pull their time, attention and even their care away, Laura finds herself a bit more than unmoored as the processes that she and Joe are going through in order to conceive are not only unsuccessful, but are also depleting her resolve and challenging her sense of who she is.
Teri has created a gorgeously written novel that is extremely careful at showing not just what someone attempting to have a child goes through when things don’t go according to plan, but also the toll that it can take on everyone else involved as they attempt to be supportive and loving in a situation that is remarkably sensitive and personal. While it is most assuredly a story that revolves around what it means to be a family, it definitely does not shy away from revealing the difficulties, the frustration and the pain that many people go through in order to conceive a child and how frightening and financially draining the cost can be when medical specialists and invasive procedures come into play.
The characters that make up Living Expenses are written in such a way that they immediately feel familiar to you as if all of these people already exist somewhere amongst your circle of friends or somewhere in your own family. The relationship between Laura and her sister Claire is particularly hilarious and incredibly moving in ways that had me pining for an alternate childhood where I hadn’t been an only child. Watching as they traverse the chaotic narrative that comes with being a family is both entertaining and heart-wrenching at times, causing you to feel immediately protective of what they all go through over the course of this emotional rollercoaster of a story.
Thank you to both Invisible Publishing and River Street Writes for gifting me a copy of Teri’s wonderful novel and allowing me the chance to read it in advance of it’s release.
October 23, 2025
After reading Vlassopoulos' first novel, Escape Plans, right before the COVID lockdown days, I have been waiting for her follow-up. Living Expenses did not disappoint. Vlassopoulos has a gift for making the quotidian meaningful, largely because of her attention to structure and striking prose. Whereas Escape Plans focused on a younger woman's attempt to inhabit a world of adulthood, Living Expenses happens in the midst of adulting. Sure it took me two months to finish this book, but this was largely because of my own "living expenses" that exploded at the end of August and ended up absorbing so much of my life that I had no energy to read beyond professional development.
Structured around the passing of seasons––beginning with Christmas and ending with Christmas years later––Living Expenses concerns the narrator's, Laura, attempt to have a baby with her husband, Joe, that very quickly requires them to enter the world of IVF. Although I have no direct experience of the travails of IVF, my sister in law went through this struggle for a couple years (and I would love to hear her opinions on this book), but aside from that the struggles of living as working married adults in an often unkind economic ecosystem definitely felt relatable. Despite the particularity of this central IVF narrative concern, there was something much larger going on: problems of adult life, economic precarity, and the weight of familial memories that include sibling relationships, fractured families, migrant experiences, emotional affairs, and the balm of nostalgia.
References to Douglas Coupland and 90s nostalgia made me laugh. The moments where Laura spoke of listening to alt-rock songs she hated when she was a teenager but now found comforting because of the memories they were connected to were moments I could understand. The sense of being thrown into unemployment, despite having had a profession for years, and not knowing how to proceed at a certain stage of life was precisely my experience when I was reading this book.
And finally, without giving any spoilers, the ending was perfect. There was a beauty in the last passage, both in terms of Vlassopoulos' prose and what this prose was communicating, that refused the cliched conclusion I kind of wanted (how couldn't you want that cliched conclusion when the book sets you up for it) but simply indicated, hopefully and lovely, at the possibility of resolution.
Structured around the passing of seasons––beginning with Christmas and ending with Christmas years later––Living Expenses concerns the narrator's, Laura, attempt to have a baby with her husband, Joe, that very quickly requires them to enter the world of IVF. Although I have no direct experience of the travails of IVF, my sister in law went through this struggle for a couple years (and I would love to hear her opinions on this book), but aside from that the struggles of living as working married adults in an often unkind economic ecosystem definitely felt relatable. Despite the particularity of this central IVF narrative concern, there was something much larger going on: problems of adult life, economic precarity, and the weight of familial memories that include sibling relationships, fractured families, migrant experiences, emotional affairs, and the balm of nostalgia.
References to Douglas Coupland and 90s nostalgia made me laugh. The moments where Laura spoke of listening to alt-rock songs she hated when she was a teenager but now found comforting because of the memories they were connected to were moments I could understand. The sense of being thrown into unemployment, despite having had a profession for years, and not knowing how to proceed at a certain stage of life was precisely my experience when I was reading this book.
And finally, without giving any spoilers, the ending was perfect. There was a beauty in the last passage, both in terms of Vlassopoulos' prose and what this prose was communicating, that refused the cliched conclusion I kind of wanted (how couldn't you want that cliched conclusion when the book sets you up for it) but simply indicated, hopefully and lovely, at the possibility of resolution.
May 25, 2025
What a wonderful book! The writing is so genuine and compelling. I was captivated by the characters and each of their lives. Although the overall topic is infertility, the book has so many details that paint a bigger picture about the life of the characters. It was like I was invited into their lives from a private, relaxing window to witness the every day. The book for sure highlights the beauty in every day and really reminded me to slow down and take it all in.
July 4, 2025
This book captures so many experiences that resonate for me: infertility and miscarriage, that liminal time after you get married when people you know start to have kids, but you’re still just traveling, the strain these things put on a relationship, the foodie internet culture of the early aughts, and what it’s like to make real lasting friendships online. I’m so lucky to count Teri as a friend, and we are lucky to have this book.
December 27, 2025
A poignant depiction of the rollercoaster of infertility. This book felt like a hug across time and space from someone who gets it.
November 7, 2025
In Teri Vlassopoulos’ LIVING EXPENSES time passes in seasons three winters, two springs, two summers, two falls, but it also passes in menstrual cycles, in conversations, in text exchanges, emails, blog posts, in twitter messages and in breaths, the deep kind you take when you want to fill your body with hope, with the belief in something that may never happen.
While the novel interrogates the having-a-baby industry, from message boards, Facebook groups, apps, and the ugly capitalistic commodification of motherhood and babyhood, what screamed out to me while I read LIVING EXPENSES was family.
Laura and Claire are sisters who are extremely close, to each other and to their mother. Vlassopoulos exemplifies this with a beautiful scene with the three women sprawled across a bed mostly naked under a ceiling fan, as an “easiness (that) was not actually that common”. If it’s because I have siblings with whom I share this same unrestrained intimacy or a human drive for a connection this deep, the family unit at the heart of Vlassopoulos’ novel reminds me how blessed I am to be this close to my family. So, while the physical and emotional struggle to have a baby is the plot point that propels the novel forward, it is love, and family that holds it all together.
When Laura and Claire meet their mother’s boyfriend for the first time over a video call; when Laura’s husband Joe accidentally dislocates a child’s arm; when Claire offers to freeze eggs for her sister; when their father sends cash; when Laura bonds with her soon-to-be stepsister, and in so many other moments in this tender-hearted novel, what we know of hope is that Laura will be fine regardless of the outcome, because she has family. If she has a baby, it will be icing on the cake. When you read this novel, you’ll know I mean more than metaphorical icing—a baby announcement will mean another delicious cake. The food-making in this novel will have you searching up recipes. This is a gorgeous book on so many levels, I hope you all read it.
While the novel interrogates the having-a-baby industry, from message boards, Facebook groups, apps, and the ugly capitalistic commodification of motherhood and babyhood, what screamed out to me while I read LIVING EXPENSES was family.
Laura and Claire are sisters who are extremely close, to each other and to their mother. Vlassopoulos exemplifies this with a beautiful scene with the three women sprawled across a bed mostly naked under a ceiling fan, as an “easiness (that) was not actually that common”. If it’s because I have siblings with whom I share this same unrestrained intimacy or a human drive for a connection this deep, the family unit at the heart of Vlassopoulos’ novel reminds me how blessed I am to be this close to my family. So, while the physical and emotional struggle to have a baby is the plot point that propels the novel forward, it is love, and family that holds it all together.
When Laura and Claire meet their mother’s boyfriend for the first time over a video call; when Laura’s husband Joe accidentally dislocates a child’s arm; when Claire offers to freeze eggs for her sister; when their father sends cash; when Laura bonds with her soon-to-be stepsister, and in so many other moments in this tender-hearted novel, what we know of hope is that Laura will be fine regardless of the outcome, because she has family. If she has a baby, it will be icing on the cake. When you read this novel, you’ll know I mean more than metaphorical icing—a baby announcement will mean another delicious cake. The food-making in this novel will have you searching up recipes. This is a gorgeous book on so many levels, I hope you all read it.
July 2, 2025
I recently read Living Expenses by Teri Vlassopoulos and would definitely recommend it!
Living Expenses is a novel following about 2 years in the life of Laura, a Canadian in her early 30s who is trying to conceive with her husband Joe. Early in the story, Laura's sister Claire moves to California and begins working with a colleague on a start up. At the same time, their mother, begins an adventure in online dating and quickly finds a new partner. While her mother and sister seem to be growing and changing at a rapid pace, Laura feels stuck in place as she experiences the ups and downs of fertility treatments without moving any closer to the goal of a child.
I feel like this would be an excellent choice for a book club, as there are so many interesting themes to unpack. As I started writing this review I was looking on goodreads and there is mention of the theme of technology, which is totally accurate, but I hadn't even thought of that! Looking at the cover, I'm also wondering if the pink and red represents eggs from fertility treatments, or does it represent Laura and Claire who were once so close and are now on opposite sides of a continent? Meanwhile, throughout the story I was wondering about the title, does living expenses refer to the amount of money and strain fertility treatments has on creating a new life? Or is it commenting on the weight of our decisions on our daily life and future? There is definitely a lot to unpack in this story, if you choose to do so. I really just loved the story and following Laura's journey. It was easy to connect with Laura and I felt her emotions throughout the novel. I enjoyed the main setting of Toronto, as well as the other settings, including Vegas, Barcelona and Greece. Vlassopoulos is definitely an author I'll be watching for again!
Thanks to river street writes for sending me this one!
Living Expenses is a novel following about 2 years in the life of Laura, a Canadian in her early 30s who is trying to conceive with her husband Joe. Early in the story, Laura's sister Claire moves to California and begins working with a colleague on a start up. At the same time, their mother, begins an adventure in online dating and quickly finds a new partner. While her mother and sister seem to be growing and changing at a rapid pace, Laura feels stuck in place as she experiences the ups and downs of fertility treatments without moving any closer to the goal of a child.
I feel like this would be an excellent choice for a book club, as there are so many interesting themes to unpack. As I started writing this review I was looking on goodreads and there is mention of the theme of technology, which is totally accurate, but I hadn't even thought of that! Looking at the cover, I'm also wondering if the pink and red represents eggs from fertility treatments, or does it represent Laura and Claire who were once so close and are now on opposite sides of a continent? Meanwhile, throughout the story I was wondering about the title, does living expenses refer to the amount of money and strain fertility treatments has on creating a new life? Or is it commenting on the weight of our decisions on our daily life and future? There is definitely a lot to unpack in this story, if you choose to do so. I really just loved the story and following Laura's journey. It was easy to connect with Laura and I felt her emotions throughout the novel. I enjoyed the main setting of Toronto, as well as the other settings, including Vegas, Barcelona and Greece. Vlassopoulos is definitely an author I'll be watching for again!
Thanks to river street writes for sending me this one!
September 22, 2025
An incisive look at changing adult relationships as things shift around you; new jobs, lost jobs, big moves, the specific heartbreak of infertility, a parent dating somebody new.
A beautiful book about the mess of life and holding onto those you love as it gets even messier.
A beautiful book about the mess of life and holding onto those you love as it gets even messier.
July 11, 2025
the best
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