Reviewed by Sadonna

TITLE:  Second Chances in Cedarwood

SERIES:  Cedarwood Pride

AUTHOR:  Megan Slayer

PUBLISHER:  Pride Publishing

LENGTH:  147 pages

RE-RELEASE DATE:  February 16, 2021

BLURB:

Who knew love could be found at a small-town hot dog shop?

Jack Walters opened his hole-in-the-wall restaurant to serve hot dogs—being a chef is all he’s ever wanted out of life. Love hasn’t worked out for him, so the last thing he expects is to find romance at his shop. But Jack’s been hurt before and he’s leery of the sexy man who keeps visiting his restaurant.

Henry Lord has been all around the world. He’s visited gourmet foodie places and tiny restaurants, but he loves the ambience at Jack’s Hot Dog Shop. He’s also in lust with the sexy owner. Henry’s shy, but he’s determined to get Jack’s attention. There are people who want to use Jack and change him.

Not Henry. It’ll take a herculean effort to prove to Jack that he’s the one for Henry. Good thing Henry believes in love, second chances and finding his home…in Cedarwood.

Reader advisory: This book contains mentions of homophobia, and emotionally abusive exes.

REVIEW:

Note:  While this is book twelve in the series, this works fine as a standalone.

Jack owns a hotdog restaurant in Cedarwood, his hometown.  Henry is a travel writer who wants to put down roots and has bought a condo in Cedarwood to use as his home base.  He likes the small town and the people.  He especially likes Jack.  He spends his afternoons at his shop and has a hotdog for lunch each day.  One day he gets the courage up to ask Jack to meet him after the shop closes.  Turns out they are both single and could use some company and friendship.  But maybe it could turn into more.

Both Jack and Henry have been burned in the past.  Jack has exes who think he needs to think big – open a “real” restaurant and become a foodie destination.  Jack has literally no interest in doing so.  There are a parade of exes who show up at the most inopportune times to try to get between Jack and Henry just as their relationship is starting to blossom.  Henry has been told by his ex that he’s boring and not enough.  They also complained about his travel and wanted to use Henry for free trips.  So they both have to work through some stuff.

One of Jack’s exes is particularly bothersome and seems to want nothing more than to mess with him.  He wants Jack to move to San Francisco and most importantly, he wants to break him and Henry up.  He’s a jerk of the first order.  While both Jack and Henry struggle with self-esteem and jealousy, it’s this guy who still seems to want to stir up trouble.  Luckily, Jack and Henry have committed to being honest with each other 🙂

Overall, this story was OK but seemed to be missing that just special something.  I found the writing to be a bit choppy in this one – a lot of inner dialogue which can be fine, but in this case, proved to be a bit much.  I wanted more interaction between the characters – not them second-guessing everything on their own.  That may just be a personal thing because certainly as a reader, I knew where they were coming from.  The relationship moved along at a pretty good clip, but I wouldn’t say it was anything approaching insta-love  And frankly, people in their mid-40s are not really going to beat around the bush.  Hopefully they’ve gotten over that in their earlier years, so I found that part to be totally believable.  I also understood the jealousy part especially since there was such a concerted effort to fan those flames.  There are a few unlikeable characters in this story – again, totally believable.  I live in a small town.  Everybody knows that telling certain people anything is probably better than taking an ad out in the paper – especially since nobody seems to read a paper anymore!  LOL!  I liked Henry and Jack for the most part, but I was hoping for some more spark from them.

RATING:

BUY LINKS:

Amazon

Pride