Vintage Housewife Books, $0.99, ISBN 978-1513031651
Contemporary Romance, 2014

Kristi Rose’s Second Chances is exactly what it says on the box, only this time, it is the guy that is coming back to the small town.

Top football coach Cole Williams is coming back to settle in Lakeland, and everyone is eager to tell his ex Lorelei Parker all about it, right from the opening page.

Okay, that telling part is quite annoying because Lorelei and her friend and business partner Andee keep reminding one another that they have been BFFs since forever, and yet they are telling one another things that they should have already known because of this BFF-forever thing of theirs.

For example, Lorelei tells Andee the name of Andee’s husband and explains why Andee married him, and Andee reminisces about how they have been friends since they were kids.

Now, this conversation makes sense if they were both supremely ancient geezers about to die and they just want to reminisce about the good times before dementia breaks their mind completely, but no, these two just happen to start the day by dropping exposition to the readers like they are plot devices and not real people. Okay, then.

Andee sighed. “I’ll never understand how the two of you fell apart. You were so close.”

Lorelei looked at her friend, the woman who knew nearly everything about her. “Things were never the same for us after he left for college. Once he got there he never looked back. So much for all those promises of love and forever.” Truth was things changed for them the night he graduated from high school and she gave him her virginity in the back of his truck bed.

“Lorelei—”

Lorelei laughed. “Seriously, Andee. How many times are we going to have this conversation?”

Yes, good question. Are their lives so boring that they can only relive the past over and over and over?

Cole talks in an equally stilted manner. Worse, he does everything he says he won’t do, and then blames Lorelei for not giving him a break.

Why are you busting my balls, Lorelei?” He knew why and maybe now was as good a time as any to clear the air.

“Why are you and your balls standing on my dock asking to be busted?” she asked, this time looking at him over her shoulder. “Go away, Cole.”

“Do you really hate me that much?” His voice was soft, nearly lost in the breeze.

Gee, he knocked her up and let her miscarry the child all on her own, then he came back without even a preemptive hello, and now he just shows up in her space without an oopsie, and he’s mad that she’s cold toward him?

Fortunately, both aren’t people as much as they are exposition devices intent on stating exactly what they feel or think at any given time and space, so there isn’t much of a prolonged argument here.

I call BS on this story. These people are not humans, they are pod people pretending to be humans by repeating the worst lines from terrible Hallmark movies. Lorelei is very quick to forgive Cole when he pretty much abandoned her, a pregnant teen that had miscarried their child, and Cole acts like he’d not done that and instead bought Lorelei the wrong birthday gift and that’s why she is made at him.

There should be more anger, irrational or not, and arguments. Emotions need to be deconstructed, accusations need to be made, and groveling apologies need to be given and accepted. Otherwise, there will be no healing and moving on from the pain of the past.

Instead, these two just act like, hey, what’s a little dead fetus anyway, let’s just get together again, yay as the rest of the town applaud like it’s the final scene of the finale episode of some small town sitcom or something.

This only cements my impression that these characters are all pod people pretending badly to be humans, and we all know what we should do to pod people, don’t we?