Fox News Dana Perino reveals the tough quarter life crisis that inspired her to write a romance novel

Dana Perino knows something about having a quarter life crisis.It was 1997 and the Fox News anchor was 25, working as the press secretary for a Colorado congressman and questioning every life choice. “I thought it was just me, but it’s everyone and all the young women I’ve ever mentored.They all go through this period of like, ‘God, I thought I would be farther along than I am.

I thought I’d have met somebody by now.Did I even choose the right career?’” Perino told The Post.“And you start second guessing all these things and getting worried,” she said.

“I worried so much of my 20s away.”Within months of reaching her own crossroads, Perino took a cross-country flight for work and locked eyes with a handsome stranger with a British accent.It was “love at first flight” and she wound up moving to England and marrying Peter McMahon, then 43, the following year.By 1999, the couple relocated to San Diego, where she worked in high tech PR, until 9/11 pulled her to reenter politics.Then in 2007, she landed a job as press secretary for President George W.

Bush, becoming the first female Republican to hold the role.“I look back and think all of that worry was for nothing,” she said.“I went through a pretty tough quarter life crisis looking back.”It’s why Perino, who’s known for her bestselling advice books for young women, including 2021’s “Everything Will Be Okay: Life Lessons for Young Women (from a Former Young Woman)” decided her debut novel, “Purple State” (Harper Collins, out now) would center on three 25-year-old women navigating life and love without any easy answers.Although she’s now 53, Perino’s passion for guiding and mentoring young women hasn’t dimmed which is why she decided to build her charming fiction debut around three NYC besties who are trying to figure it all out.“I’m trying to tell them, don’t worry your young life away,” Perino said.The lives the characters think they’re supposed to ha...