Author: Mona Shroff
Publisher: HQN
Genre: Romance
Source: HQN ( Netgalley )

Goodreads: The Second First Chance is a big, wonderful, messy love story about family, heartbreak, strength and courage. It shows us that sometimes what we want is what we least expect, and that everything we need is often right in front of us.

Strength comes in many different forms.  

Riya Desai and Dhillon Vora grew up together. Sharing secrets, hiding in their tree house, they were playmates, best friends and later—as teenagers—almost something more. Until the devastating house fire that ripped them apart, claiming the life of Dhillon’s father and Riya’s big brother, Samir. Riya and Dhillon have barely spoken since that terrible night, but they both made big decisions based on that fire.

Riya has chosen to fight fire with everything she’s got, but it’s not easy. As the only female firefighter and one of the only people of color at her fire hall, she has to prove herself over and over. Plus, she’s hidden her career from her family.

Dhillon wanted to heal things, so he became a veterinarian. When a chance encounter with a rescue dog throws Riya and Dhillon together again, he’s furious at her career choice. After what happened to them, how can she run into fires on purpose? For Riya, Dhillon’s anger is unacceptable: How can he not see that she’s protecting others from the very losses they both experienced?

Ope’s Opinion: This could be a Hallmark movie if you took out the unnecessary foul language. Towards the end there was a weird scene, where Riya and Dhillon were mad at each other, then all of a sudden they were okay and happy with each other. It felt rushed to me.

It was interesting to learn about the culture, but some of it was hard to understand who was an aunt and who was related to whom. I did like the independent women in this story and those women not backing down when a man thought they were not correct in a decision they made.

The epilogue covered a lot of time and wrapped it all up.