Second Chance Romance: Review of Second Chapter

by C.G. Macington | My rating: 4 of 5 stars | Goodreads | Amazon

Second Chapter is a brilliant second-chance romance between famous author Thomas and his high school sweetheart Oliver. You’ll want to read this one. I’m giving it a very strong recommendation. I read it all in one evening, and it involved tears, cheers, and a much too late bedtime. I simply could not put it down. My 4.5 out of 5 would be a solid five, except for some noticeable repetition of lines and some time incongruity that made me pause and run things back to see if I missed something. 

Blurb

Fifteen years ago, he wrote their love into the stars. Now fate is writing back.

When celebrated science fiction author Thomas Winters returns to Harbour Point after fifteen years away, he’s only seeking solitude to finish his bestselling space series. Instead, he finds Oliver Chen—the man who got away—now a widowed bookstore owner raising his thirteen-year-old daughter Lily.

As Thomas struggles with writer’s block, young Lily becomes the unexpected bridge between these two men with unresolved history. A passionate fan of Thomas’s books, she senses a deeper connection between her father and the author whose novels line their shelves.

In a small coastal town where private matters rarely stay private, Thomas and Oliver must navigate not only their complicated feelings, but also the challenges of building something new under the community’s watchful eye.

Second Chapter is a heartfelt story about second chances, found family, and the courage to choose love—proving that sometimes the most important journeys lead us back to where we truly belong.

Plot

A second-chance romance isn’t always my thing. But I vibed with this one fully. Famous author Thomas Winter’s career has taken him far from Harbour Point, where he grew up, and he never looked back. His feelings for closeted Oliver, who he left behind, haven’t ever gone away. He’s kept his love alive and well, because basically the whole story he has spent 15 years writing and gaining fame over is about his love for Oliver. It’s not very subtle. 

He’s having major issues writing the last book in the series. His writer’s block is extreme. Everything feels fake. His agent, his editor, and most especially his publisher are at the end of their rope. So, he finds himself going home to Harbour Point to work. How his agent chose his hometown randomly seems a bit of a stretch, but it works for the narrative the author is crafting.  Since the main character in his books is just a fictionalized version of Thomas himself, there’s a parallel with the story playing out this way. 

Once he arrives, it doesn’t take him long to reconnect with Oliver, who he is surprised to discover has a 13-year-old daughter, Lily. 

Characters 

Thomas

Thomas is a bit of a mess. But he’s an enjoyable mess. Thomas has not been back to his hometown since he grabbed the chance to leave when he got accepted into college. Now he’s back, and he’s anxious about his writer’s block. Being back in Harbour Point brings back all the nostalgia and a new perspective. Thomas has enjoyed success with his space-opera book series that he started writing while still in high school. He bounced his initial ideas off Oliver. Olive pulled back when Thomas got accepted into college. He let him go. 

Oliver

After Thomas left 15 years ago, Oliver decided to be the traditional, perfect son that his father needed him to be. He dove deeply into the closet. He navigated his father through illnesses and took over the family bookstore when his father passed. Oliver married Sarah. Sarah died of cancer three years ago. Even though theirs wasn’t a romantic love, they were each other’s rock and best friend. Oliver has been lost and drifting ever since her death, while at the same time helping his daughter deal with her mother‘s death.

Lily

Oliver‘s daughter Lily is my favorite in the whole book. Thomas’s books, which he wrote basically as love letters to Oliver, acted as a buoy, a life jacket for Lily, who is also a huge creative sort. She loves science fiction and has stories of her own bubbling inside her. 

Sarah 

Sarah is nearly a fourth MC because she is a driving factor in Lily’s motivation to write a story, which brings the main characters closer together. So why not, Sarah gets her own paragraph, too. Their solid partnership leads them marriage and start a family, even though Sarah knows Oliver is gay. They have Lily. Sarah got sick, and ultimately passed on. 

Glows

This Second Chance Romance is SO Romantic

Oh, how this story is romantic. The parallels between what needs to happen in the book Thomas is trying to write and what needs to happen to settle Oliver and his history are heart-swelling and lovely. Thomas’s character is stuck because Thomas hasn’t faced his past. 

He’s spent 15 years running away. He’s resisted coming home in the same way his character, Captain Elian, needs to in order to finish her story. To finish their story, Thomas needs to return to Oliver. They have to find one another again. 

The romance is fairly by the book, but it WORKS. Oh, how it works. Their love seems big and true and inevitable from the very beginning. What doesn’t make sense to me is why Thomas doesn’t see that this is what he needed to break through his writer’s block from the beginning. Maybe he is just in denial. 

Lily’s Story

The story Lily writes for the Young Authors competition is literally so gorgeous and compelling. I want to read it. Like I would purchase a book of the story that she writes today, yesterday, two weeks ago. It’s beautiful. It’s absolutely beautiful. So, if the author just came up with that idea to flesh out their side character’s plot, wow. 

Note to the author: You need to write Lily’s book. Publish it, because it’s beautiful. You should also go ahead and write the Captain Elian series because I would read that, too. But make Elian a man because I hate straight fiction, hah. 

But could a 13 year-old write that book I doubt it. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, but I would strongly doubt That that doesn’t make it a bad plot. It’s a book and the story works too adds to the journey that Thomas and Oliver are on in a way that isn’t subtle, but it’s very effective.

Parallel Character Development 

Much like Lily’s story, I want to read the series Thomas writes. The plot compels me, the details are poignant and beautiful, the characters, the science, the star charts that are mapped out. I want to read it. And it makes the story come alive, like Thomas is a real author. It’s one thing to say that the MC is an author, and then have it never come up again, and it’s another to have details about what the MC writes play a huge part of the plot. Well done on this part. 

Yes, the main characters are thinly veiled iterations of Thomas and Oliver. What Thomas needs to do to get his life back on track is what Captain Elian needs to do too. The journey Captain Elian and Thomas have taken in their lives is parallel to one another. Yeah, it’s not subtle but it doesn’t even matter because it just works. 

Grows

Not Subtle

It can be a glow and a grow, okay? I mentioned already that the metaphors and connections to their real-life love story are in no way subtle. I mean, the navigator’s name is Chen, which is Oliver‘s last name. Harbour Point is a main character in Thomas’s books; the whole town is there. Albeit, it’s Harbour Point with a space-façade over the real-life town. 

Pacing and Time Inconsistencies

On a few occasions, a character mentions something time-specific that conflicts with some other already established event. It was enough to make me stop and search the text for keywords to make sure I didn’t miss something. I didn’t, there are just some inconsistencies. 

For example, the deadline for Lily’s story is tomorrow. But later they mention the story again, and she’s still working on it. It seemed like time passed oddly a few other times that I am not remembering off the top of my head. 

Do You Know or Not, Friend?

And then there’s Oliver’s whole freak-out. At one point, Oliver acknowledges that he has known all along that the series is all about him and Thomas. Which is why it surprises me when, later in the book, Oliver has a complete freak-out at a sci-fi convention when confronted with this fact. 

If he knew about it all along, if he read the books and picked up on the not so subtle parallels with his life and Chen, with Thomas and his love story, it totally doesn’t make sense for him to lose it after he had previously expressed his understanding that the whole book the whole book series is Thomas’s love letter to him. 

I digress, that’s one of the reasons that it’s getting four and a half out of five instead of a solid five.

Repeating Phrases

I am nitpicky about this, but I dislike it when an author repeats phrases. Two intimate scenes had very similar verbiage, and I think readers notice when words and phrases are repeated. It takes the reader out of immersion and makes whatever is happening on page feel less important. And since it was an intimate scene, it pulled me out. 

Lily’s Maturity 

Seeing as I teach 13-year-olds and Lily is 13, I am largely skeptical about how mature, advanced, and unselfish Lily is written. It’s true that Lily is described as a very intelligent child. For what it’s worth, I have taught thousands of 13-year-olds in my career. 

The prose that Lily writes in her story is extremely advanced for a 13-year-old. I’m not saying that a 13-year-old couldn’t write like that, but most 13-year-olds that I have taught could not achieve the level of storytelling and prose that Lily can. 

But, this is a thing, people. Authors often miss the mark when it comes to writing children in a realistic way. Either they write children far too mature or far too immature. They’ll write very young children as speaking in full sentences and doing things autonomously at 2 years old. I’ve seen older children written as far too advanced. 

It seems it’s often the case that adults don’t know how children act if they’re not actively around children all the time. That might be a little bit of what’s happening here. However unrealistic I think Lily may be, Lily is still my favorite character in this book. 

Recommendation

I give this book a very rare 4.5 out of five stars. It’s nearly perfect. It is gorgeous. It is a second chance romance, which I incidentally don’t usually like so it’s even more remarkable that I give this one, a strong, strong recommendation.

Reviews

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