I recently read a book that really struck a chord with me. It's about a protagonist who faces some serious challenges, and her journey is both heart-wrenching and uplifting. The author does a fantastic job of drawing you into her world, making you feel every setback and triumph right along with her. Her resilience is the kind that makes you sit back and really think about the strength of the human spirit.

What's cool about this story is that it steers clear of the typical time-travel gimmicks you often see. Instead, it delves into a more realistic take on overcoming tough times. I found myself really rooting for the main character and feeling a sense of joy at her eventual victories. It's a story that really showcases the power of not giving up, no matter how tough things get.

The book touches on some darker moments from the protagonist's past, which adds a lot of depth to the story. I did feel like a bit more romance could have spiced things up, though. The romantic bits that are there are well done, but I think a deeper dive into that aspect would have made the story even more engaging.

All in all, this book is a standout piece of writing. The main character's story is one that a lot of people can relate to, especially the theme of getting a second shot at things. A little more love story would have been the icing on the cake, but even without it, the book is a compelling and thought-provoking read.

Thank you Forever for the eARC!

**thank you to netgalley for the ARC. These thoughts are my own***



“Sadie Thatcher’s life has fallen apart in spectacular fashion. In one fell swoop, she managed to lose her job, her apartment, and her boyfriend—all thanks to her big mouth. So when a fortune teller offers her one wish, Sadie jumps at the chance to redo her awful year. Deep down, she doesn’t believe magic will fix her life, but taking a leap of faith, Sadie makes her wish, opens her eyes, and . . . nothing has changed. And then, in perhaps her dumbest move yet, she kisses her brother’s best friend, Jacob.

When Sadie wakes up the next morning, she’s in her former apartment with her former boyfriend, and her former boss is expecting her at work. Checking the date, she realizes it's January 1 . . . of last year. As Sadie navigates her second-chance year, she begins to see the red flags she missed in her relationship and in her career. Plus, she keeps running into Jacob, and she can’t stop thinking about their kiss . . . the one he has no idea ever happened. Suddenly, Sadie begins to wonder if her only mistake was wishing for a second chance.”



What a ride, this book made me feel all the emotions. I loved the character growth throughout the story. I especially love the overall message that you should never have to water yourself down for anyone. This is definitely a book I’ll continue to think about.

I seem to be going down a magical realism hole this fall and this time loop book just adds to it.

We open with Sadie, who is coming off a Very Bad Year. She's lost her job and her boyfriend and is couch surfing at her brothers best friends house. Then a chance encounter with a fortune teller, at a carnival themed NYE party, gives her a second chance to make things right. But she quickly starts to realize, as we all do, that the grass isn't always greener. And fate has a way of working the way it wants, regardless of people's choices.

What I love about how this is written, is that it starts after the original year is over with just a bit of back story on the important points. We then get the repeat year broken up by each month. So as opposed to a ground hog day style retelling of what we've already read once the time loop happens, we get a completely new story. I really enjoyed watching Sadie's growth through the story and how she realizes that, despite her toxic parents, how valued her outspoken personality is by others. The world needs more Sadie's. So while there is romance in the book, its not the main focus. The growth and the message are. But don't be dismayed, we still get an adorable love interest in Jacob. He was the perfect shy, quiet, nerdy and pining guy. I loved all his acts of service as a way of showing subtle affection. As well we get some great found family aspects in her team at Higher Grounds

This was a great addition to my holiday reading and a new author discovery for me. Huge thanks to Forever Pub for my advanced copy in return for an honest review.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
I loved The Second Chance Year. I couldn’t put it down and read it in one sitting. TSCY is a well-crafted story about Sadie - a very accomplished pastry chef in one of NYC’s best restaurants, with a killer apartment and a successful boyfriend - getting a wish granted on NYE to re-do the past year. Why would she want a re-do? Well, all of those things she had, they’re all gone.

With no job, no apartment and no boyfriend Sadie thinks that if she just has a chance to go back and fix what went wrong she’ll get all of those things back. As Sadie relives the previous year she does things differently and soon realizes that there will always be consequences to your choices and your choices don’t always just affect you. And what you think you want isn’t always what you really need.

I literally couldn’t put The Second Chance Year down and read it in a few hours. I recommend TSCY if you like a well-written time loop story with a nice cast of secondary characters, a brother’s best friend for a love interest, and also tackles some tough topics such as misogyny, sexual harassment and unsupportive parents. By the way, if you have a sweet tooth you may want to have your favorite treat on hand as you read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for the digital ARC of The Second Chance Year.

This book just made my heart happy. I’ve recently realized that I really enjoy stories that involve time travel. I enjoyed watching Sadie’s character evolve during her second chance year. Things happen for a reason and Sadie comes to that realization more and more as the months pass.

The romance between Sadie and Jacob was really sweet, but it took a back seat to heavier topics throughout the book. Topics that included family pressures and sexual harassment. The book felt more like women’s lit, than a romance. But, I was still very happy for the HEA I knew would come at the end.

I want a Higher Grounds Coffee Shop in my neighborhood. I loved all of the quirky side characters we got to meet there. It really added a fun, endearing aspect to the story.

Overall, a sweet story with wonderful side characters. Definitely a book I’d recommend.

Oh my heart almost didn't make it through this one! After a disastrous year, Sadie just wants a redo, so when she goes to a carnival and meets a fortune teller, she gets her wish. Only, after meeting with the fortune teller and putting her plan into motion, she realizes that she might not actually want the same things she did just hours before. You see, at midnight, she kisses the boy she's known forever and that's when feelings start to change. When she wakes up the next morning, only to be transported to the year before, the one she wished she could redo, Jacob doesn't know about the kiss and she has to try to navigate her life again, without making the same mistakes she made before.
This book hit home because it really shows you, you are on the path for you even if you don't feel like it. Even if you feel like you should be something different than who you are, love yourself. The ones that stick around and that love you no matter what, those are the people that are meant for you. If someone wants to change you or make you into something other than what you are, they aren't for you. Jacob was just the sweetest and I knew one of the twists before it happened and when it did, my heart just got a bit crushed for Sadie. Everything will work out as it should in the end. Don't wish for a redo. Be you, unapologetically.
Thank you to Forever, Netgalley and Melissa Wiesner for an early copy.

This was a very cute time loop romance. It was a slight too predictable and a tiny bit cheesy but overall an easy fast read for a romance lover.

Read this book if you like:
•second chance romance
•brothers best friend
•different timelines
•a chance to redo a year of your life

This book was so dang cute. Sadie had a terrible year and she jumps at the chance to redo it. The author touches on some deeper topics too - sexism in the workplace being a big one. This book comes out in December and you won’t want to miss it! Thank you Forever for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I want to thank NetGalley and Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for providing me with an egalley of this book to read and give an honest review. The thoughts expressed here are my own.
What if you had a chance to do it all over again? Sadie has had the worst year of her life, but a chance encounter with a fortune teller gives her a chance to set things straight. But what if setting things straight didn't turn out how you thought it would and changed things for the worse?
I love the idea of a second chance. Of trying to redo things and make them right. But I also know that things happen for a reason. So right away, Sadie's choice for a redo had me feeling like things could only go wrong for her. And that's exactly what happened. She set herself on a path that wasn't made for her and in the process changed herself into someone she never wanted to be.
I enjoyed watching Sadie try to blaze a new path and correct the things she thought were wrong her first time around. But the best part was watching as things devolved for her and she started to learn the real lesson: life dishes out what you can take and puts you on a path so you can find your true self.
Overall, I liked the characters in the book enough but I didn't feel drawn to any of them. Their development was ok for me but I didn't necessarily feel the connections the author was trying to make.
And while the pacing was fairly fast, I didn't feel as invested in the plot as I would have liked.
I did love Sadie's break into something new in the form of the cafe rather than the high stakes of the restaurant business. It was nice to see she was able to figure out a path for herself she really felt comfortable with.
The romance was cute but again I just didn't feel a true connection between her and Ethan,.
The story does touch on the topic of sexual harassment. I think the author did a good job showing how women often feel they cannot speak up for fear they will never be able to get ahead. And the author showed how Sadie tried to mold herself to be something she wasn't and then finally realized she needed to break out of that shell.
The writing is on the lighter side and it's not as much of a romance as I thought it would have been. Overall, I thought the theme was fun but the execution left something to be desired.

I love books that have a what if aspect to them? What if you could have one wish to redo the worst year of your life? How would you change things or would you keep them the same? That's what happens to Sadie- she get a second chance to redo a year where she loses her job, her place to live, and her boyfriend! She gets another chance to make different choices and see what happens!

Sadie keeps running into Jacob, who is her brother's best friend. In the first timeline, she made a choice to kiss him. In this do-over year, she can't get the kiss out of her mind, but he doesn't remember it ever happening! What will she do to see how things could be?

I love time loop or groundhog day scenarios, and this story delivered!

Sadie has had a Very Bad Year - getting dumped, fired, and becoming essentially homeless and living out of her brother's best friend's bedroom was not where she thought she would be on New Years but it's where she finds herself. During a particularly chaotic carnival themed New Year's party, she approaches a fortune teller who gives her the option of reliving the entire last year. Sadie doesn't necessarily believe it will work but when she wakes up the next morning and it's January 1st of the year before and her ex-boyfriend is in her bed...she is suddenly offered the opportunity to redo everything she regretted from the year before.

I really enjoyed this! Sadie has some major character growth to do throughout the book but the payoff really works - to get to see her finally stand up to her awful boss, to see her choose to breakup with her boyfriend who wants a very different life than she does was really nice.

The romance was also super sweet though I wouldn't call this a romance as it focuses much more on Sadie's life. I loved how much it focused on Sadie's relationships with everyone in her life and how she gained a different perspective during her "second chance year".

Thank you to Forever for the eARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Yes the plot is familiar but don't pass this by because it's a disarmingly charming look at a woman who rethinks her choices in a bad year that she's able to do over. Sadie is a baker and she has a good gig at a hot restaurant except that the chef is a pig and she's not willing to compromise her principals any more. Her boyfriend has changed since taking a job on Wall Street. And so now she's living in Jacob's spare room. And then she's granted a wish and does the year over. Will she keep silent about the abuse and bad behavior at the restaurant? What will happen this time when the chef throws a fit about a spoiled pan of pate? And what about her love life? Some of her choices the second time around will haunt her but will she make them right? There's a sweetness to this (besides the fact that she's a baker)- to the older woman at the coffee shop, to her relationship with her brother and with Jacob, and so on. There are a few surprises - no spoilers. One quibble- this would have benefited from another edit to eliminate a bit of the repetition about Sadie's parents. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. A good read.

After a fortune teller gives Sadie Thatcher the opportunity to re-do her Very Bad Year and prevent her from losing her boyfriend and job, she soon learns perhaps it might not have been bad at all.
Especially when she can't stop thinking about that kiss with Jacob, her brother Owen's best friend and landlord, just before her year was wiped clean.

Melissa Wiesner uses the time-travel trope in a fresh way to explore sexism and misogyny. Sadie is forthright and outspoken, but uses her re-do to withold her opinions with her boyfriend's new finance douchebros colleagues and her verbally abusive boss. Playing by the rules may give her her boyfriend and job back, but at what cost to her happiness?

While the slow-burn romance with her brother's best friend, shy composer Jacob, was more of a secondary plot, it was nonetheless still enjoyable. I really liked that we had a gender reversal with the introverted nerdy character being the male, while the ballsy, outspoken character was the female. Jacob values her fully, having been the beneficiary of Sadie standing up to classmates bullying him and her brother when they were kids.

This book was thoroughly enjoyable, balancing serious themes but with a character journey that kept me glued to the page. There's been a real spate of time travel romances lately (Sophie Cousen's The Good Part and Kate Robb's This Spells Love), I'd definately recommend this one to add to the TBR pile.

Thanks to Forever (Grand Central Publishing) and NetGalley for the ARC.

The Second Chance Year is a cute magical realism that's got a bit of everything: romance, family drama, women's fiction... check, check, check.  After having a horrible year, (her boyfriend of 3 years dumped her, she got fired, and lost her apartment all related to her telling people off) Sadie asks a fortune teller for a re-do while at a New Year's Eve party. While the fortune teller strongly advises against it, Sadie is insistent on it. After leaving she stumbles back to Jacob's (her brother's best friend) apartment who has graciously been letting her live there rent free! They have a magical first kiss out of nowhere and then he takes off. Her brain is left spinning! The next morning though she wakes back up in her old apartment, next to her ex-boyfriend Alex, and very late for work while discovering that she got her wish. For the next year, broken up into chapters by months, Sadie struggles with trying to not make the same mistakes again. She's also fighting the feelings she now feels for Jacob while still being with Alex. This book was a bit of a rollercoaster as Sadie tries to nagaivate life as the new Sadie, who is quiet, not one to raise a stink and certainly not one to call someone out. Being a sassy outspoken person myself, I struggled with her journey a bit because she wasn't being true to herself. BUT I think this was written this way intentionally. Sadie is on a journey and she's got to get there on her own terms. I loved the ending, the characters and the found family vibes in this. Ya'll know I'm a sucker for found family novels. While I've certainly wished I could rewind the clocks on a few conversations, I don't think I'd trade out a whole year, no matter how bad. If you're looking for a new magical realism book this might be just up your alley. I cruised through it in 2 days! Thank you Forever, Grand Central Publishing, and NetGalley for the gifted copy in exchange for an honest review. Pub Day is December 5th.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Sadie was having a very-bad-horrible-terrible year. She lost her job, her boyfriend, her home - she was utterly adrift. Wallowing away on her brother's best friend's couch, she believed she had no one but her and her big mouth to blame. If only she had a second chance, she would do things differently.

I am sure you have already predicted that Sadie did get her second chance to relive that terrible year. With a wish and touch of magic, she found herself back at the beginning of where she believed it all went wrong.

There were lots of wonderful and fun moments to enjoy in this book, and also some that had my heart hurting for Sadie as she sucked it up and lost a lot of herself in the process. The beauty of this spin on a time-loop was the way Sadie saw things from her past with a new perspective. I liked how she realized that things were not that perfect and her actions weren't always wrong.

She was often admonished for having a sense of justice and acting on it by those close to her (boyfriend, parents). This time around she was going to hold her tongue, but this caused Sadie to lose some important parts of herself and some important people, too. Wiesner tackled sexism in a way that did not weigh down this delightful rom-com as well. It was thoughtful, but never too heavy.

Overall, this was a great use of a time-loop which allowed Sadie to grow tremendously. Her personal journey was made even better with a wonderful found family and a sweet romance that I was wholly onboard with. Though things seemed tough for Sadie, I never lost hope that the universe would make sure all went as it should.

3/5 ⭐

You start this book off with Sadie loosing her job, apartment, boyfriend, and essentially everything she thinks she has to offer. She is granted a wish for a do-over of the past year. Lets be honest, that idea alone sounds fantastic.. i don't know about you, but anytime a movie has that story line, its an instant watch for me.

This book is more so a light and fluffy read, but it does have some "darkish" topics.. mainly about a toxic work place, sexism in the work place, and suppressing her voice and beliefs.

Whats interesting with this book is that is that the book covers the whole year, every few chapters are a new month. I prefer it this way instead of the constant time jump like other books have had when involving "time travel".

The book to me feels rushed, most things feel irrelevant. But that could be due to the fact of trying to cover everything that seems to be important in such a short book. There is many things i wished would have been elaborated on more. Not to mention her family, i cant stand when books have the typical parents only like them when they have what they want, ie perfect job & perfect boyfriend.

Now after all i just said, the book is a solid book. Its be nice for anyone who likes the movie groundhogs day. It is a very slow burn with a light and charming romantic feel.

Thank you netgally for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Reading The Second Chance Year was such a pleasant surprise. I am a big fan of magical realism stories so I knew I had to read this one. In this story Sadie gets to repeat her very bad year, but soon realizes things aren’t as she imagined.
Sadie was a very likeable characters, that is why my heart broke for her and the way her parents treated her. Honestly, I read those parts with a huge knot in my throat, I was almost crying along with her.

**SPOILERS**
Jacob was such a sweet guy; he was amazing to Sadie. And sometimes it was frustrating that she really couldn’t tell he was always into her. But I’m glad Sadie took the opportunity to really get to know him.
I was beyond thrilled when they kissed for the first time. Both times.
**END OF SPOILERS**

For me, the story has everything: fun, drama and romance, all spun with interesting characters and plot, creating a really great read that I truly, and deeply enjoyed.

I have a review post for this book on in Instagram that is linked below. I thought it was a good read. It didn’t fit the typical rom com formula as it was more a character development story. I would have liked to see more on the romance side. However, I did enjoy this book, it was a cute, funny and quick read!

🥮🎶🗓️
The Second Chance Year
Author: Melissa Wiesner
Number of pages: 336

Single POV
Brother Best Friend
Second Chance Romance (kind of)

⭐️ - 3.5
🌶️ - No Spice

If you got a do over, would you take it? Get the guy back? Your job back? That’s exactly what Sadie gets, a redo of the past year to correct things where they went wrong, but what if they weren’t actually wrong?

This was a cute book! Sadie was sweet and funny. She had moments where I felt bad for her like with her parents or thinking she needed to change herself for others. Jacob has always just been her brother’s best friend. He’s also always been her hype man, admirer, and support system, she just didn’t see it.

I really enjoyed this book. I love that even with a do over, things will always end how they’re supposed to end. That the people or the job you thought you were right for, weren’t right for you. I had a great time reading this book and would recommend it!

Charming romance that doesn’t shy away from so hard topics. Love the main character’s strength, and the whimsy of being able to go back in time