SECOND CHANCE
JOY COLLINS
ISBN# 978-0-595-45602-4
September 2007
iUniverse
2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100, Lincoln, Nebraska 68512
Trade Paperbook
Price: $16.95
252 Pages
Women’s fiction
Rating: 3 Cups

Sara Weber lives in Arizona with a loving husband and two adorable dogs. A nursing background, Sara works from home running her own successful medical consultancy firm. Sara’s childhood was not a particularly happy one. Her parents’ marriage was a shambles and her father’s sudden departure from the family home, left Sara living the latter part of her childhood with her mother and younger sister.

Sara’s husband, Paul Weber is easy going, gentle, a loving husband and works full time for a local company close to home. A divorcee and a father, Paul needs to stop running away from addressing issues and unresolved problems of his past he has unconsciously brought into his marriage to Sara.

Mona Weber is Paul’s ex wife. Luckily, for Sara, Mona lives out of town and communicates with Paul only by telephone. Looming and lurking on the horizon from their divorce, are a few loose ends that require tightening up. Mona’s numerous telephone calls that are evidently upsetting Paul, heartbreakingly concerns Sara who, naturally, cares and wants to protect her husband’s state. The impact of growing up in a broken home, the lack of love and no father figure are some of the influencing factors causing Sara to consciously work hard at keeping her marriage healthy. Due to her unfortunate childhood, Sara suffers and experiences the adverse effects of various insecurities, problems around self-esteem, fear, battles with self-confidence and self-doubt and at times, doubts her husband as his problems escalate.

Joy Collins vividly centers on the wide ranging issues surrounding divorces, family break-ups, feelings of ambivalence, desperation and the emotional helter-skelter rides. I felt that reading one woman’s account of what it’s like to be married to a divorcee with issues was exactly that. Accounts were very informative and offered great insight. Elementals of a novel, more of an intrinsically plot driven theme and ending would have corroborated a flourishing conclusion.

Delores
Reviewer for Coffee Time Romance
Reviewer for Karen Find Out About New Books