Book Title: Second Winter
Author and Publisher: Sophia Soames
Narrator: Jaxon Jensen
Audio Release Date: March 10, 2025
Tense/POV: first person/ past tense
Genres: Contemporary MM Romance, Sweden
Tropes: Second Chance, ten years later, school reunion
Themes: Grief, forgiveness, untangling past mistakes
Heat Rating: 4 flames
Length: 7 hours and 10 minutes
It is a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links
Also available in Kindle Unlimited, Hardback, and Paperback
Ten years ago, Ned Anderson made the biggest mistake of his life.
Blurb
Ten years ago, Ned Anderson made the biggest mistake of his life.
Now he’s been invited to go back to Sweden for his exchange-year high school reunion. It’s a chance to reunite with all the people he once considered friends, and the invite promises a charcuterie board, open bar, all that…crap.
The biggest mistake of his life was leaving, and if he went back…
Does he even want to?
Teddy Backman has become exactly what everyone expected of him. He runs his farm the way his father once did. Gets up in the morning and gets things done. Tries to remember what’s next. Wonders why he feels so violently lonely when he’s surrounded by so many good things. The sun. The sky. The earth. The trees. All the trees.
He’s already deleted that email—the one inviting him to someone’s idea of a joke. There’s no one from back then he’s interested in talking to, let alone drinking or, God forbid, dancing with.
A high school reunion is Teddy’s idea of a nightmare, and he probably shouldn’t let anyone drag him along. He’ll only regret it.
But what’s the point of regret in the grander scale of things? It’s not like Ned Anderson’s going to turn up, is it? The guy who fled straight back to Arizona without even a last longing glance.
Second Winter is the story of something that was always there. A second chance at happiness in the last place you’d expect to find it.
Author’s note:
This book deals with grief, death of a loved one and feelings of loneliness. Please read with care if these themes may affect you.
I’d always watched him, his very presence giving me that strange mixture of butterflies and peace. Not that he was any kind of male model or vision of beauty or whatever. He looked nothing like any actor I’d ever seen on screen. He was just…Teddy. Steady and solid. Blue eyes and all that hair. He’d grown some kind of attempt at a moustache, weird curls of hair caressing his cheeks. Large hands that he combed through the mop on his head as he stood tall to let Flora lean her forehead against his chest.
An intimate gesture. A loving couple.
I knew better.
One of the local taxis turned up, and even that made me smile because they still used the same old cars with the same weathered sign on the roof, like an old-fashioned taxi, bold lettering proclaiming to cover the entire county with twenty-four-hour service. Memories flooded back of laughter, both his, and mine.
He kissed Flora’s cheek and she slapped his arm, almost tripping over her own feet as she climbed into the taxi. I laughed too as Teddy carefully closed the door on her and then opened it again so she could hand him the tin of beer she still had in her hand. Yeah, no alcoholic beverages in taxis, Flora. I almost scolded her myself.
He still hadn’t seen me watching him, because why would he? He was almost past the pizza place across the square before my brain caught up and I realised he was leaving, walking towards the south end of the village, towards the main road, where he’d take the exit on the left and walk for miles, over the hills and past the frog pond.
I’d walked it myself, more times than I cared to remember. The road to Aunt Violet’s place was the next exit to the right, and then he’d have to just keep walking. And it…
“Ted!” I shouted, my feet having set off in a sprint. “Teddy! Hey, man. Wait up!”
He turned around but not until I was desperately out of breath and had shouted at him at least four more times.
“Man,” I panted out as I finally caught up with him.
“You trying to un-alive yourself?” He wasn’t smiling. Neither was I.
“I need to talk to you,” I huffed out, my hands on my knees. I was fitter than this, but it was also, like, four in the morning where I came from and I had downed several beers and eaten barely anything.
I needed my head examined. I was also doing that American thing Aunt Violet always berated me for. Getting in people’s faces, sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. Being over-friendly.
“Why are you even here, Ned?” He didn’t sound angry. Just…I don’t know. Tired?
I was tired. I was so, so tired.
“Can I walk with you?” I asked, sounding miserable. Why was I here? I had no bloody clue anymore.
“Shouldn’t you be back there with all your mates? I mean, Thomas was pouring everyone his homemade shots.” He was waving his arms around, trying to…I don’t know. Get me away from him? “I wouldn’t drink them. I’d probably go blind from that stuff.”
Silence. Just us. The sky and the earth, and it seemed too big. Bigger than anything I could deal with.
“I know I—” I started, but he cut me off.
“Yeah, you did. And it was a shitty thing to do, and then you left. Like it was nothing.”
“We were just kids.” A stupid excuse. One that didn’t hold up anymore.
“And it meant nothing,” came his reply.
It had meant everything, and I had no words to explain it, even now, ten years later. It had been something so small and insignificant, but it had been…everything.
I shrugged with unease. He took another step closer to me, right there on the high street.
“You never even talked to me. A whole year you were here and never spoke to me. We were never friends. Never hung out. Explain that, Ned Anderson. Because here you are, ten years later, treating me like we’re some kind of buddies?”
He’d said that last word, mimicking my American twang, mocking me. I had no upper hand here. All I had was guilt. And a need to grovel.
“I know,” I said weakly because he was right. About everything. I didn’t know what I’d been thinking.
He sighed. “Go home, Ned.”
Then his big hand fell on my shoulder. He squeezed my arm, and I shivered.
“In the end?” he said. “It didn’t matter, did it?”
COMING SOON ON AUDIO
Book Title: Little Harbour
Author and Publisher: Sophia Soames
Narrator: Jaxon Jensen
Release Date: February 2026
Tense/POV: third person/present tense
Genres: Contemporary MM Romance, Single dad
Tropes: Forbidden love, friends to lovers, small town romance, forced proximity,
Themes: Single Dad, Family, Children, Coming out, bisexual awakening, Male Midwife
Heat Rating: 4 flames
Length: 14 hours and 6 minutes
It is a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.
Very clear content warnings for the very last bonus chapter, with an opt out clause if the reader/listener prefers to end the book there. Not reading the bonus chapter does not affect the overall enjoyment of the book or storyline.
Audio Buy Links
Audible US Profile | Audible UK Profile
Also available in Kindle Unlimited, Hardback, and Paperback
One messy single dad. One celebrity midwife. Four feral children. A lifetime of love.
Blurb
This is a story about life and death, because there was never anyone else for Jens. He had been with Sofie almost all his life, from the day they met at school when they were fifteen, until the day she took her final breath against his chest. She was always everything to him. As he was to her. He never doubted that. Not for a minute.
This is an adventure of hope, where Axel Kleve keeps himself too busy to even stop and think. Work, sleep, eat, repeat. He loves his job as a midwife at Oslo’s University Hospital. He’s good at lecturing and training, and now he has somehow been pushed into running “Ask Axel”, a midwifery blog on PNN, the parenting-site everyone in Norway trusts.
This is a tale of second chances. Jens, he doesn’t let himself think of Axel. He doesn’t think of Axel at all. And Axel needs to stop longing for that one crush he’s never been able to leave behind. It’s just plain ridiculous. He should have gotten over Jens Sommerfeldt years ago.
A M/M novel full of love and family life, featuring a horde of feral children, a stolen pram, a Midwifery blog and an ill-advised stint on TV. Oh yes, and a man who had lost hope and another who never gave it up.
Sophia Soames should be old enough to know better but has barely grown up. She has been known to fangirl over TV shows, has fallen in and out of love with more popstars than she dares to remember, and has a ridiculously high-flying (un-)glamourous real-life job.
Her long-suffering husband just laughs at her antics. Their children are feral. The dogs are too.
She lives in a creaky old house in rural London, although her heart is still in her native Scandinavia.
Discovering that the stories in her head make sense when written down has been part of the most hilarious midlife crisis ever, and she hopes it may long continue.
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About the Narrator
Jaxon Jensen is an internationally recognized and awarded singer and actor, hailing from rural Western Canada. He is a classically trained opera singer, graduate of the University of British Columbia’s Undergraduate Opera Performance Program, Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s Advanced Apprenticeship Program, and has lived and worked around the globe. In 2023 he officially opened his own studio, Jaxon Jensen Studio, where he trains actors and vocalists from around the world, and has discovered a newfound joy in championing the success of his students. He currently lives in Mexico City, where he is surrounded by love, laughter, and the most supportive community he could ever ask for. A special thank you to Eric, without whom none of this could be possible, and to Sophia for creating a world where people like us do get a happy ending. Your words are a gift to us all.
Jaxon
