A Year of Second Chances is a heartwarming emotional story that’s perfect for summer reading. The lives of three different women, Charlie, Suzie and Dawn, converge over the course of a year. Each of the three women are looking for a second chance and they will discover it through each other in this compelling and entertaining novel.

Kendra Smith’s characters feel so realistic that it’s like reading about people we know and we get a full, detailed portrait of their inner lives. She makes sure to bring plenty of humour to the book but there are also heartfelt and even devastating moments. Through Charlie, Suzie and Dawn’s journey, Smith takes us on an amazing journey and encourages us to reflect on the power of friendship, motherhood, aging and finding the courage to keep going.

The vivid, easy-to-read writing style brings all of the elements together, creating a book that’s a delight to read and it’s the perfect choice for a summer escape. A Year of Second Chances is definitely a book to be added to your reading list.

Given what I'm going through in my life right now, I'm glad I waited to read this book... Kendra Smith has given me a beautifully written book!

The story of 3 very different women, Dawn is a mother of two lovely children but is approaching 50 and feels that she should do bucket life things.... but her husband isn't really going along with it, is he up to something? Suzie is desperate for children but has only one frozen egg left and her husband has become resigned to being childless..... maybe there are other ways! Charlie had had a tough life working loads of cleaning jobs trying to support her son as a single mother but where is she going to find the money to send him to college. When the three meet at the gym where Charlie cleans it seems they can all help each other out.

A lovely story with lots of great comedy moments and some great characters, I loved Ramone and his special brownies that he shared with Dawn's mother in law! Perfect light fun read for the beach

I really enjoyed A Year of Second Chances which features the lives of three very different women who are all struggling or missing something in their lives.

Suzie and Dawn have been friends since university, they meet Charlie who is a cleaner at the gym they attend. Dawn is approaching fifty and craves some excitement in her life, Suzie is heartbroken after several failed fertility treatments and Charlie has a loan shark knocking at her door.

Charlie and Suzie come up with a plan that could be beneficial to them both. Meanwhile, Dawn is on a mission to come out of her comfort zone (with hilarious consequences). A blast from the past reappears who causes Suzie’s heart to flutter and an extrovert mother in law gives Dawn some major headaches.

I loved the Spanish au pair Ramone who is studying English and makes ‘special’ brownies. There is literally something for everyone in this story, the characters are hugely relatable and there are plenty of shocks and surprises along the way. My heart went out to each of the women at different times, I loved the friendship, the humour, and the romance. A lovely escapist novel from a talented author.

A great holiday read. I liked all three characters and how their friendship developed through the story. There are plenty of twists and turns which I didn’t expect, but which kept the story interesting. It is light-hearted, funny in places.

This took me quite a while to get into and I will admit I prefered the first book by Kendra Smith. However, once you got going it was an enjoyable enough read.

Now onto my review, and I will also be sharing some exclusive writing from the book (at the bottom of the page), if my review doesn’t tempt you enough!

A Year of Second Chances follows the lives of three women, Charlie Suzie and Dawn. Each women is going through difficult moments in their lives and each dealing with what life throws at them in very different ways.

Charlie, a single mum of a teenage boy, Tyler. Charlie lives in disarray in every way possible, her house is a mess, she is in debt that has a loan shark knocking on the door demanding payment and she works multiple jobs in order to make ends meet.

Dawn is about to turn 50 and thinks her life needs some excitement, married to Eric with two young children, she decides to spice things up with the help of a website she found. The website has a list of ideas of ‘things to do before you turn fifty’, only they don’t always go to plan.

Suzie, a woman desperate to be a mother, but unfortunately has been dealt a cruel fate and after failed attempts at IVF, her and her husband decide to take a break. But never getting over the longing of wanting a child, when she discovers she has one last egg left to use, she takes drastic measures even if it is against her husbands wishes. Not caring the consequences, as long as she gets the child she has longed for.

…

How do these women come to be entangled with one another? Well, Dawn and charlie find themselves both caught out shoplifting. Charlie desperate to makes ends meet and Dawn because of a dare on a website she found, only thing is she didn’t think she would get caught! Whilst they have a chat about how Dawn accepted a dare from a website, Dawn realises that she recognises Charlie from the gym she attends. Charlie is a cleaner there. When they are left to leave the supermarket, Charlie finds dawn offering her a lift home and Dawn convinces Charlie to use her free gym membership from her boss and join her in some classes as it will be a laugh. When Charlie gets home she is faced with the slimy loan shark at her front door demanding payment however she can pay.

Suzie finds herself constantly gazing at mothers with their children and thinking of how she would love her children etc, she is so unhappy with life that she finds herself being unfaithful to Rex, hr husbad. She hates herself for doing it and feels nothing but guilt but she is so desperately unhappy that she is finding herself in these awful situations with no way out. It doesn’t seem to matter much that Rex is so loving and would do anything for her.

Dawn and Suzie are old friends from uni, and very different. Suzie sees Dawn as morally perfect and laidback whereas Suzie is uptight and unable to let loose. They go to the gym together and that is how Suzie first sees Charlie, Suzie is quite a snob and instantly judges Charlie on how she is dressed, because she looks far from Suzie’s glossy near perfect self. After the gym class Suzie confesses about her encounter with a stranger and how the IVF clinic emailed to say they have their last frozen embryo, they are now at the end of the year of keeping it and if a decision ins’t made they will destroy it. Suzie and Rex swore they would never do IVF, not after the last time when they fell pregnant and got excited…. only to lose the baby. But it is all Suzie has ever dreamed of. Dawn is very supportive and admits that if it was her, she wouldn’t be able to sit by and let it be destroyed either, that she would have to give it one last go.

When Suzie goes home that evening and suggests to Rex that they try one last time, he agrees to give it one last try, only she didn’t tell him that actually she wouldn’t be the one carrying the baby… you see she has decided the only way she will get her baby, finally, is to get a surrogate… And so Suzie calls round her friend Dawn to help her. After going online and sharing emails with a potential surrogate, she invites her over to her home and hopes to get some support and a second opinion from Dawn. When she answers the door who should it be but Charlie stood on the doorstep! Charlie, absolutely desperate to pay off her loan shark and help Tyler get through collage has decided to go with surrogacy to earn some money.

That is how these three women’s lives collide into one!

I could honestly talk all day and night about the ins and outs of this story but I have to stop and not ruin the story for anyone! I LOVED Dawn, she may actually be my favourite chracter. I loved that she didn’t want to sit around going stale as she hit the menopause, I love she followed through on dares, even when they went tits up and she ended up flashing everyone her lady garden at a dinner party, in front of the most stuck up school mum! Good on her, I think sometimes we all wish we could be more daring than we are and that quality in Dawn really endeared me to her. I think Charlie was easy to love because she just found herself in a real crappy spot in life, she didn’t mean to end up where she did and now she is desperately doing anything and everything she can to help out her son. Something I think ALL mums can relate to, we would all do anything for our kids even if we sometimes go the wrong way about it. As for Suzie, yes okay she doesn’t make it easy for us to like her, she is snobby, a control freak and doesn’t handle situations as well as she could… BUT I completely understand that desperation of wanting to be a mum, the heartbreak when it doesn’t happen again and again. I have been there myself. So I got her need to micro manage everything within her power, even if it drove people insane. I also got her desperation to want Charlie to eat well, have a clean house and be safe. She so desperately wants her baby to arrive safe and sound and is so terrified that Charlie may want to keep the baby that she becomes necrotic. So, after initially not warming to her the more I learned of her story the more I felt for her and understood her.

I kind of thought I knew how it would end, so I was GENUINELY, gobsmacked at what came up. I wasn’t sure how it was even possible but I liked that, I liked that I never saw that curve ball coming, so often you can see how stories will play out, so it is brilliant to be completely wrong!

I really enjoyed Kendra’s writing and I found it flowed brilliantly, making it really easy reading and hard to put down. Each chapter was a different woman’s story and each chapter ended leaving me wanting to know what would happen next, I couldn’t stop reading and I couldn’t wait to get back to each woman’s story. That isn’t easily done, yet Kendra did so effortlessly.

A touching story with brilliant humor that will make you genuiney belly laugh. Wonderfully written, it will touch your heart and remind us that no matter what life throws at you, you will get through it, even when you want the ground to swallow you up because your child got hold of your dildo!

I cannot recommend this enough, get your sun cream on and read away!

I really enjoyed this book. The story follows the lives of three women, each of which is dealing with a difficult time in their lives. Well written, the story flowed beautifully. I really liked each of the characters and how they developed throughout the story. There are plenty of twists and turns which keep the story interesting. The book is funny in places. A book full of friendships, family and relationships.

A perfect holiday read, I recommend this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

Really enjoyable read. Good characters and a Good story. Well worth a read. Think others will enjoy.

Three women, 3 stories. A bit not believable. I put the book down about a quarter through it. I couldn’t relate and wondered how many avid readers could. After going back and reading other reviews, I went back and read more. Still disappointed, I gave up.

A Year Of Second Chances is an emotional journey, one I am so glad I took. I was hooked by the cover and the blurb, but the story drew me into the world of these women so throughly that I could not get stop reading until I had read every word. My new favorite read of the summer so far.

Thanks to NetGalley for an early copy in return for an honest review
A very good read and one I can highly recommend to others.
I could not put this down.
Thoroughly enjoyable with an amazing cast of characters that you cannot help but engage with.

This was a book about 3 different women and life choices. I found this to be clever and witty. It is definitely a fun summer read! You will not regret it!

I liked this book very much!
There such sweetness floating within the characters..Even in the most dramatic moments, there's always hope .
Dawn, Suzie and Charlie are very courageous women fighting for what they want and need. Sometimes losing a bit of perspective, but recovering it wisely.
I'd recommend this book with pleasure.

The Blurb :
Three women. Three very different lives. One life changing adventure.
Charlie is a single mum unlucky in life. She's working multiple jobs just to try and put food on the table. She dreams of being able to give her son the life he deserves. So when an opportunity to make a lot of cash comes along, she simply has to take it.
Suzie has always wanted to be a mother. But fate has been cruel and now time is running out. Soon her final frozen egg will be destroyed and her last chance of having a baby will go with it. With her husband resigned to their childless lives Suzie will take matters into her own hands.
Dawn has hit a midlife crisis. Soon to be fifty she's trying to inject the fun back into her life. But with an interfering mother-in-law and judgemental mums at her children's school it's proving harder than it looks.
Over the course of a year three lives are about to collide and as they do, friendships blossom and new beginnings emerge.

My Thoughts :
In A Year of Second Chances we meet three women who are very different.
First is Charlie, who is in a lot of debt and really struggling with life and being a single mum to her son. She needs money and fast.
Next is Suzie, who is married and desperately wants a child but is unable to make that happen herself. She thinks she may need to resort to drastic measures to get what she wants.
Lastly we have Dawn, fast approaching her 50th birthday and is fed up with life and an interfering mother in law that questions everything she does, Dawn decides she wants things to change.
Here we have three very different women who all want something, when they meet can they make it happen or are things meant to stay the same?!.
It did take me a little while to get into the stories and their lives as it jumps around with each character so you get a little confused as to who you are reading about. But its worth sticking with as we follow the trials and tribulations of these women. Full of love and friendships, this is a book worth taking the time out to read. Looking forward to more from Kendra Smith.

Have to admit really struggled to get into this story, the first few chapters flitting between the main characters was confusing for me, however I was determined to persevere & was glad I did. Each of the three women have something to offer each other & the way they do is a lovely journey that the reader can enjoy

I don’t even know where to start with this review...

You know what vague-booking is? *nods* Well, I’m about to chance my arm at vague-reviewing. Trust me, this is more for your benefit than mine. There is nothing worse than someone spoiling a story before you’ve even picked the book up! *shakes head* Perish the thought.

Prepare yourself for an emotional journey – one that had me questioning what I would’ve done in either of these three ladies’ shoes. What is it they say? – Walk a mile in my shoes before you judge me.

*sigh*

It took me a few chapters to get into the story, but once I did, I couldn’t put it down. I was engrossed in each of the character’s individual stories and how they interconnected. ‘Six degrees of separation’ kept repeating in my head.

I’m also sitting here laughing at myself looking at my highlighted notes in the book. They are all Daniel *blushes* I’ll admit he left an impression *coughs*

One thing he said in particular resonated with me:

“I’ve always thought that events in life can be for a reason, that you meet people when you are meant to.”

Amen to that!

Without each other, I think the outcomes for Charlie, Dawn and Suzie would have been very different. It’s their dynamic that works.

The author was very clever in her use of light and shade in the story. As the tension mounted, you’d be hit with an unexpected bout of hilarity. Little Alice was the absolute scene-stealer for me. I must admit I was cursed with the same affliction as a child. They didn’t call me ‘Loppy Lugs’ in my house for nothing *snorts*

This is a story of life, love and friendships. Life isn’t always sunshine and roses and sometimes we have to walk a different path than the one we envisaged, but some things are just worth the extra effort.

I’m a firm believer that friends are the family we choose for ourselves. I think Charlie, Dawn and Suzie are a testament to that fact.

Ugh, too many emotions *wipes tear*

I look forward to reading more by Kendra Smith soon.

An unexpected read with a deep sensitivity about 3 women and their lives and the way their friendship blossomed overcoming all their problems.

CHARLIE had financial problems and with her son's growing needs, she was fed up with all the debts and the paucity, a vicious cycle that her life had become. She soon agreed to a secretive plot. SUZIE was obsessed with wanting her own child, soon hatched a plot to make it a reality when she got a call from the IVF center about her last embryo. DAWN was approaching 50 and had her own problems with the other mums and mother-in-law and her husband. He seemed to have lost interest in her and disappeared every Friday evening.

My first book by author Kendra Smith, I was soon engrossed in the lives of these women. I loved the way the author had characterized them. They were so different yet with similar needs of wanting to be happy. Their paths crossed, they became the best of friends, and sometimes foes, yet got back together. The thread of hope was weaved beautifully into this book. My niggles popped up, the book was a bit too long and some parts read slow.

Overall, a great women's fiction that I enjoyed on a rainy evening.

Warm, witty and emotional, Kendra Smith’s A Year of Second Chances is a fantastic read fans of Cathy Kelly and Lucy Diamond are going to love. Written with great insight, humour and sensitivity, A Year of Second Chances is a must-read women’s fiction novel that should not be missed.

Single mum Charlie has never had much luck in life. Making ends meet is proving harder and harder with every passing day and despite the plethora of jobs which she undertakes, she barely has enough to feed herself and her son. Money is tight, opportunities are limited and stress is at an all time high. Charlie is sick and tired of constantly worrying about money. She would love to lead a life where she doesn’t have to worry about where the next pay cheque is coming from. She wants to give her son the life he so richly deserves, so when an opportunity comes along to make more money than she ever dreamed about, she gleefully accepts. However, is Charlie aware of just what she is letting herself in for? Is money really going to solve all of her problems? Or is it truly the root of all evil?

Being a mother is all that Suzie has ever dreamed of. Unfortunately, fate had other plans in store for her. Despite all of the money she had spent to make her dream a reality, she had never been blessed with a family of her own. Time is now running out for Suzie and her husband and while her spouse has resigned himself to the fact that he will never have a biological child of his own, Suzie is not about to give up on her dream to become a mum just yet. Her latest frozen egg is about to be destroyed, but Suzie is not ready to kiss her dream of having a baby goodbye. She resolves to take matters in her own hands, but is she ready for the shocking consequences that will arise from this decision? Will her determination to have a child of her own end up costing her everything which she holds dear to her heart?

Dawn’s fiftieth birthday is fast approaching and she cannot help but feel that life has passed her by. With her mojo seeming to have taken a holiday along with all of her hopes and dreams, Dawn wonders whether life truly does begin at fifty – or whether that is a cheap platitude greetings cards companies have come up with to sell birthday cards! Having an interfering mother in law thwarting her at every turn and a gaggle of school mums putting her down at the school gates, can Dawn find the courage to be happy again? Or should she buy a cardigan and a pair of sensible slippers and be done with it?

As life propels the three women in one another’s path, they soon realise that second chances are there for the taking – but only if they have the courage to fight for what they want and grab any chance at happiness with both hands!

A fantastic read women aged eighteen to eighty will relate to and recognise themselves in, A Year of Second Chances is an uplifting, uproarious and emotional read that is very difficult to put down. Kendra Smith makes her readers laugh and cry – often on the same page – and there were moments reading the book that will have readers nodding in recognition because her characters go through the same experiences many of us go through in our daily lives.

Kendra Smith writes about real women with real emotions and real problems and reading A Year of Second Chances is like having a catch-up with your group of friends over a cup of tea and some cake. Charlie, Suzie and Dawn are fantastic characters I grew to care for and I hated saying good-bye to them at the end of the book.

Kendra Smith is a name to watch out for and I look forward to reading more of her books in the future.

I received “A Year of Second Chances” by author, Kendra Smith, from NetGallery in return for my true and honest review.
Charlie, Suzie and Dawn are the main characters who have very little in common when the story begins. They are at different stages in their lives. By chance, they meet each other and learn about each other’s problems. Thus begins their story of finding friendships, overcoming challenges and having hope.
I look forward to reading more books by Kendra Smith.