Return to Liora Blake’s Grand Valley series with Second Chance Season, in which an avowed country boy with a family duty meets an ambitious city girl with even bigger goals and who shows him just what he’s been missing.

Garrett Strickland is unapologetically country, fiercely loyal, and perfectly happy with his job at the Hotchkiss Co-op. Garrett is all about living in the present and not dwelling in the past—even if he was once on his way to a lofty agricultural sciences degree that would guarantee the brightest of futures, only to end up back home when his old man died, leaving behind a debt-ridden family farm that was impossible to keep afloat. After that, it was easy to see why dreaming big wasn’t worth the heartache. And until he crosses paths with a city girl who’s hell-bent on kick-starting her own future, he’s sure that good enough is just that.

Cara Cavanaugh is ready for more from life, even if that means changing everything; including dumping her boyfriend of ten years, turning down a lucrative job at a major newspaper, and leaving behind the upscale suburbs of Chicago where she grew up. Now, she just has to pray that temporarily relocating to the middle of nowhere in Colorado will be the first step in building a career as a freelance journalist—all she has to do is prove she’s got what it takes to make a name for herself. Unfortunately, her tony country day school is as close to “country” as she’s ever been. But when a goodhearted guy who looks like he just stumbled out of a country music video offers to help, she ends up falling hard…and discovering that the perfect story is a love story. And it’s theirs.

Second Chance Season, book two in the Grand Valley series, is a charming, feel-good romance, perfect for fans of Jennifer Probst and Kristan Higgins.

Second Chance Season is the second book in Liora Blake’s Grand Valley series and it follows the cutie patootie that works at the Co-Op, Garrett Strickland. In First Step Forward, we learn that Garrett was going to college to earn a degree and learn all he can before he took over his family’s farm. He had plans for his future and he was hoping to learn all he can to make his family business a profitable one but all of his plans went to crap when his father died and he ended up losing the farm because he couldn’t come out of the mountain of debt his father was in to save it.

Garrett’s world was rocked after his father died. He not only lost his father but he also lost his childhood home and his plans he made for his future. He never went back to college, he got a job at the town Co-Op and has been working there ever since. He doesn’t live the most glamorous life but he’s okay with his lot in life. He’s okay with living alone in a trailer. He’s okay with not knowing what the future holds and all of that stays true until he meets Cara Cavanaugh.

Cara Cavanaugh is making some changes in her life. She dumped her boyfriend and moves from Chicago to Hotchkiss, Colorado to write her first freelance writing article on the AG scene in Hotchkiss. She’s not sure how to go about interviewing the locals for her story but when she meets Garrett Strickland, hometown boy, things take a turn for the better. He knows everything and everyone around town and decides to help her any way that he can. He starts by introducing her around and getting her in the door with the local farmers, setting her up to interview people and he takes her out with him to help his neighbors on their farms so that she can see how everything works and he’s a real knight in shining armor even though things have to be weird for him since she’s staying in the only home he’d ever known growing up. The home that he lost after his father died.

Second Chance Season is a slow simmering romance that really worked for me. I adored getting to know Garrett and seeing him come into his own after his world was rocked upside down. I loved seeing him come to grips with the past, making peace with it and then finally making plans for his future. It was a long time coming and I really liked that Cara was able to help Garrett just as much as Garrett was able to help Cara when she got into town. It wasn’t a one-way thing and their attraction that blossomed into that love was a journey that I loved being a part of.

This book was rich with charming characters that I couldn’t get enough of and I’m super excited to continue the series with Braden’s book. Both Garrett and Cara were characters that really came alive with each passing page. They were normal and they were fun to get to know and even when they were both being boneheads, I adored them. Liora Blake did a great job of weaving a compelling romance with characters that readers will connect with and I’m happy with the story she wrote here. It was fun and it was sweet and I’m definitely in for more.

Grade: 4 out of 5