Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Second Chance
AUTHOR: Jay Northcote
PUBLISHER: Jaybird Press
LENGTH: 240 pages
RELEASE DATE: April 20, 2018
BLURB:
Everyone deserves a second chance.
Nate and his teenage daughter need a fresh start, so they move back to the village where he grew up. Nate’s transgender, and not used to disclosing his history, so it’s hard living where people knew him before. When Nate reconnects with Jack—his best friend from school and unrequited crush—his feelings return as strong as ever.
Jack’s returned home to get his life in order after an addiction to alcohol caused him to lose everything: his job, his driver’s licence, and nearly his life. He’s living with his parents, which is less than ideal, but rekindling his friendship with Nate—or Nat as Jack once knew him—is an unexpected benefit of being back home. Jack is amazed by Nate’s transformation, and can’t deny his attraction. Trying for more than friendship might ruin what they already have, but the chemistry between them is undeniable.
Doubting his feelings are reciprocated, Nate fears he’s risking heartbreak. Jack’s reluctance to tell his parents about their relationship only reinforces Nate’s misgivings. With both their hearts on the line and their happiness at stake, Jack needs to make things right, and Nate has to be prepared to give him a second chance.
REVIEW:
Once best friends, Jack and Nate are barely more than strangers when they meet again after both having moved back to their home village. Not that Jack knows that he is talking to his childhood best friend when the man approaches him; because growing up Jack’s best friend was named Nat, not Nate. All Jack knows is that a rather handsome, kind, man was willing to reach out to him and not judge him for the depression still clinging to him. Even after he finds out that Nate is the same person who was his closest friend–before cutting off all contact barely after they left school–he can’t help but see the same kind man…except now he has the added weight of years of friendship, and years of silence, to add to the picture. But several decades is enough time to go from friend to stranger, and after struggling with depression and addiction, Jack isn’t sure he is in a place to start figuring out where one begins and the other ends. Or if there is room enough between them to be something wholly new. He can’t help but hope though, when he looks at Nate and sees a second chance at something he never knew he had a shot at to begin with.
It might be selfish, or self-centered of me, but I have to say that I am deeply grateful that Jay Northcote came out as trans…because he writes some damn good stories, and now he writes some of them about people like us, and I am just so happy that that is a thing that is happening now. Not to say I wouldn’t be happy if some of my other favorite cis-gendered authors would write trans MCs (and some have), but there is just something about reading books by trans authors that really gets to me. Maybe because they really get me. And yeah, I would be lying if I said one of my favorite parts of this story wasn’t the fact that this story revolves partly around a trans man who didn’t figure out he was trans till he was an adult. Because that is me. Oh my god, how that is me. And it is nice to have read something that for once doesn’t make me feel kinda sad that I missed the bus by not being born ten years later into a world where finding out that it is possible to be a transgender man wouldn’t have rocked the foundations of my world. So, yeah. If for no other reason, the fact that Nate was an adult when he finally figured out he was trans, made me kind of love this story.
But for others who are not dealing with my baggage or my background…I think you might like it too.
Jay Northcote is a damn good character writer, and I ended up not only loving Nate and Jack, but the secondary characters as well. I connected easily with Nate, for obvious reasons, but Jack with his doubts and depression was also so easy to care about. Even when one or both of those meant he was making some rather stupid choices. Personally I think Jack gets the lion’s share of the character development in this book, which is fine, but I would have loved a bit more on Nate’s side of things. Granted, Nate is in a lot better place personally and mentally when the story begins, so it is understandable that Jack would have more of a character arc than Nate. But from what I we get about Nate, I think it worked well.
My only real issue with the story is the sex scenes. Mostly that there are too many for my taste, not that they are badly written. They tend to overtake a lot of the character and relationship stuff in the story, and I wish there had been one or two less in the book. For what they were, they were enjoyable to read, but had the story focused a bit more on Jack’s issues, or even Nate’s worry that Jack wasn’t ever going to be comfortable being with Nate in public, I think the relationship would have been a bit more grounded by the end of the story. As it was, it felt a bit rushed. The fact that they had a friendship growing up help negate some of the problem, but they haven’t seen each other for quite a few years, and it doesn’t quite feel like they know enough about each other as they are now, to be moving in with each other by the end of the book.
Other than that, though, it was an enjoyable story. Not too heavy, nor too light, just a nice book to kick back with and enjoy on a lovely spring day. Or whatever it is wherever you are.
RATING: 
BUY LINK: