Last year, a friend let me know that she was putting together a proposal for Apple Books to do a second chance romance feature. She asked me to submit any of my second chance romance as part of that.
When I think second chance romance, I think a second chance at love–full stop. So my mind immediately went to The Posse, where Jude, a young widow who experienced deep and abiding love with her late husband, finds herself falling for their long-time best friend. She gets a second chance at love.
But apparently, this is not the generally accepted definition of second chance romance–what I learned was that this is a much narrower understanding, wherein the love must be between the same two people, both times.
Happily for me, I had a book like that, too. The First One is the second book in my Love in a Small Town series. It’s near and dear to my heart, because it’s actually a story I had had in my head for a long time before I wrote it.
The book was inspired by Tim McGraw’s song Everywhere. The very first time I heard those lyrics, a tale began to evolve in my mind . . . a young couple in a small town, both of them eager to escape together, until the day of departure arrives. Why didn’t she go with him? That was what made the story.
Ali is the youngest sister of Sam Reynolds, and when we meet her in The Last One, she’s the single mom of a feisty little girl named Bridget. Sam and Ali both reference the fact that she’s divorced, but neither of them says much more than that until one night when Ali spills her heart to her new friend Meghan, the woman who’s slowly winning Sam’s love.
Still, we don’t know what lies ahead of Ali until The First One, when Flynn, the boy who’d been hers back in high school, comes back to Burton for a sad occasion. As it turns out, there’s more awaiting Flynn than he expects.
Since Amazon has price-matched the book, Kindle readers can also get in on the fun right here.
