Review: The Second First Chance - Blakely Bennett

Review: The Second First Chance - Blakely Bennett - March 2016

We all have those months, don't we? The ones where nothing on your shelf seems to call to you, where you find yourself scrolling endlessly through your Kindle at midnight, jabbing hopefully at titles and praying something sticks. That was very much my life lately,  a proper reading slump that had me wondering if the magic had gone out of it entirely. And then a title caught my eye, and something just said yes. That's how I stumbled into The Second First Chance by Blakely Bennett, and I am ever so glad I did.

This book pressed on a question I suspect many of us carry quietly in our hearts: what if you could have just a little more time with the person you love? Jayden's husband Callahan is killed in a car accident on their twentieth wedding anniversary, an ordinary crossing of a road that changes everything, forever. It is the kind of loss that hits you right in the chest as a reader, because it is so terribly sudden and so utterly unfair. But the universe, it seems, agrees. Callahan wasn't meant to go that day, and Jayden is offered something extraordinary the chance to go back ten years and meet him all over again, to live their love story with a whole extra decade tucked inside it.

"What would you do if someone handed you more time with the person you love most? I found myself turning that question over and over long after I'd closed the book."

Of course, nothing in time travel ever goes quite as sweetly as you imagine. The Callahan of this new world is subtly, unsettlingly different from the man she married, and to make things rather more complicated, a certain hunky professor seems very taken with Jayden indeed. Bennett weaves these threads together with real warmth, keeping you guessing at whether Jayden will find her way back to the love she knew  or discover that what she's searching for isn't quite what she needs.

The whole thing gave me the most wonderful cinematic feeling, very much in the spirit of the new film Eternity with Miles Teller and Elizabeth Olsen  that same bittersweet blend of grief and hope and the dangerous, beautiful possibility of do-overs. If you enjoyed that, I think you'd settle right into this one with a cup of tea and feel very at home.

It isn't a flawless book  the new Callahan sometimes felt a touch underdeveloped, and I wanted to understand his differences a little more deeply  but the heart of the story is generous and the central question is one that lingers. We all know time travel always leaves ripples, as they say. Would you take the leap, knowing that? I genuinely couldn't decide, and I loved that this book made me think about it so seriously.

A warm, readable rescue from a reading slump, and sometimes that is exactly the kind of book you need most.

Storygraph Link: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/fff598ab-515c-43c8-8f6b-b3649d637f6f