Will a second chance erase the past and what will the future hold?

Synopsis

When seven-year-old Fran first met Will they knew instantly that they were made for each other. For eleven years they were inseparable, but then, at the age of eighteen, Will just upped and disappeared.

Twenty-five years later Will is back.

Is fate trying to give them a second chance?

Still nursing the heart break from all those years ago, Fran is reluctant to give Will the time of day. The price Will must pay is to tell the truth – the truth about why he left, the truth about why he’s back…

And Fran has her own secrets to hide. The time has come to decide what Fran and Will really want from life – before it’s too late.

My review

Fran and Will met when they were still young children. But very quickly they became best friends and were inseparable. And that close friendship inevitably changed into love. That was until Will’s mother died and Will and the rest of his family packed and left for never coming back.
So obviously present Fran is shocked when Will is back.
And while Will is over the moon with having Fran back in his life, she isn’t so ready to let the boy that broke her heart back in her life.
But that’s not all, no matter how good it feels spending time together again, and old feelings resurfacing, Will must come clean about his past and his reason of being back. And Fran has her own secrets she kept from Will.
How will all the revelations affect the emotions? Is a second chance at love written in the stars? Or is a new heartbreak in the make?

When I started reading this story, I thought that this would be one of those sweet stories, with obviously somewhere a struggle between the main characters but with a happy end.
But I wasn’t prepared to be on an emotional rollercoaster, where I would laugh over the beautiful bits, cry over the many heart-breaking moment and grasp for air with each revelation.

This story is yes a romance, but not only that… there is so much going on, with equal importance and not all romance – related.

In first instance, I found it refreshing reading how Fran seeing which way the wind blows when Will appears back in her life.

It’s obvious that what happened so many years ago, truly broke Fran’s heart, and she isn’t in the phase ‘forgive and forget’.
However, she wants her old friend in her life so she gives Will a chance. While the old feelings quickly resurface, she doesn’t want to take the next step too quickly. And that’s what I loved about her too, she always keeps in mind what’s best for her son Kieran.

But nevertheless, it was heart – warming to see how Fran and Will are getting closer again and seeing how their love gets a second chance!

And if they getting back together would be the end of the story, it would have been a nice story yes, but like I said before, it goes deeper than just two people finding each other after many years spending apart.

I’m not going to dig deeper into what our main characters have to endure, but it broke my heart to read why Will was back. I had a sense of injustice, because what the author wrote, was just not fair for Fran and Will. But the way they handled the hard bits (and they were really difficult, even just for us as a reader…) made my admiration only grow.
And not only Will has a secret he has to tell Fran, Fran herself had a few secrets…

While it would have been so easy for each party to blame and hold a grudge, the matureness of both Fran and Will is something many people should have. Of course, the initial shock makes them keep their distance, but they realize time truly is precious and why waste it on being angry when the past is just that, the past. It’s not something we can change anymore…

Let me also add that I enjoyed reading the parts where everyone wanted to tick off items of the bucket list made when Fran and Will were still younger. Each new adventure put a smile on my face!

This was a wonderful read, not what I expected but maybe that’s why I even liked it more. it shows us how the past events change us into the people we are now. But what I kept in my mind was, that no matter what happened in the past, or what the future will look like, love is always worth of taking that chance. Even if afterwards you will have a broken heart, it’s better to have lived those wonderful moments together than regretting to not have them.
And maybe most important of them all, it’s never too late to forgive someone…