A beautifully written debut that shows that the path to finding yourself and the path to true love are one and the same. The autistic representation is so well handled, and Liz's growing awareness of who she is as a person is so real that it feels like I came to know her. Unpeeling the layers of who Tobin is (and whew, he is fantastic underneath) was an added bonus. The side characters are well-defined and add so much to the story. I highlighted so many lines that made me laugh, wince and cry. I cannot wait to read more from Maggie North.

I think this book had a lot of potential, but overall I struggled to enjoy it. I think the marriage in trouble, two people who have changed separately coming together and re-learning about one another is interesting, I just think perhaps this was written too bluntly for a topic that I think needs some more nuance. I think Liz blames Tobin for a lot of her own choices, and Tobin overall is shown as being overall caring and kind. The plot was odd, and the improv being the thread throughout didn't feel authentic. I think if you want a book with a lot of personal development of one character and a second chance romance, you may want to give this one a chance. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to provide my honest review.

I enjoyed this second chance romance. It was emotional, humorous, and hopeful. I liked the angst, but at times it felt a little overwritten.

Liz is tired of being the person that is always in the background, always the one that says "no" to the fun thing, and always the one that gets overlooked. Her husband makes matters worse with his ability to charm anyone and how he is always up for a fun time. Since they got married, they have been struggling seeing each other. When Liz has had enough, she decides the marriage is over, but Tobin isn't ready to give up yet. He suggests they work together to help her achieve her goals and see if they can save their relationship along the way.

I like a good marriage-in-trouble trope. It offers such an emotional gut punch when the characters know each other intimately, but still struggle to connect. I liked this look at Liz and Tobin working out their issues. They had a lot to deal with including Liz's neurodivergent discovery, job situations, and multiple family issues. The one criticism I had about this book was the clunky feel of the writing. It felt like the author was trying hard to make it more literary instead of letting the scenes flow. I would still read more from her, because I loved the story and the characters.

I think fans of Emily Henry and Abby Jimenez are going to like this book. It has the romance plus that those authors offer. Thank you to St. Martin's and Netgalley for the ebook in exchange for my honest review.

Sweet second chance book by a Canadian author. This dealt with heavier topics but had two great leads in Liz and Tobin. The pacing was a bit off for me at times, but I liked the writing style and would read more from the author. .

Rules For Second Chances is a mix between finding oneself and a marriage in crisis. Liz and Tobin have hit a rough patch in their marriage and both of them see it but haven’t acknowledged it until one day Liz snaps and asks for time. During that time apart, Liz tries her hand at improv to improve her chances of winning a promotion at work and Tobin ends up helping her practice while also working towards seeing if their marriage is salvageable.

I really wished this book was dual POV cause I would have loved getting Tobin’s perspective on everything they were going through. They both realized that it took two to get where they were in their marriage and it takes two to get them back on track. Somewhere along the way, Liz releases herself from the box she put herself in a long time ago and let go of the blame she put on Tobin because of it and finally began to see herself as he saw her and sees her again. Tobin was a softie and truly cares for Liz and once he realized his part in their relationship he made active changes to improve himself for the better. I wish they hadn’t have kept the work pitches from each other cause that would have saved a whole lot of trouble.


Thank you @stmartinspress and @netgalley for this eARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

I think I had the same problems many others had, the prose and the way the characters were written made it really hard to get into the story and enjoy it.

In this marriage in distress sorry, we meet Liz and Tobias whom have been married a handful of years and lost their spark.

Liz wants a separation and moves out. She wants a promotion at her job and decides to join an improv team that is hosted by one of her “rivals”. When she needs a partner, her last resort is with Tobias and thus starts the beginning of them working back to each other.


This book was so cute and Tobias was certainly swoon worthy. The epilogue was sweet but a bit too predictable. I’m sure most will enjoy that aspect.

Liz Lewis, cynical introvert, is married to Tobin Renner-Lewis, complete extrovert and adventure guide extraordinaire. How the heck did they end up together? That's a question I kept asking myself because Liz's internal dialogue would keep me from ever talking to someone like Tobin. She gets passed over for a promotion and is recommended to start taking improv classes. She fails tremendously at improv, but it gives her the opportunity to change parts of herself.

Gail Shalan is a new to me narrator. She did a wonderful job of narrating Liz's POV and giving life to the characters.

I was not expecting how this book would feel when I accepted the widget the publisher sent me. I had read the blurb and thought this would be quick and easy. Yeah, that wasn’t the case. Put it this way: I was a teary mess as the book ended. Since I read at night, that woke my husband up, and I tried to explain what set me off.

The main storyline for Rules for Second Chances is centered on Liz. When the book starts, Liz is hurrying to her thirtieth birthday party, which is thrown for her by her very popular, extroverted husband, Tobin. Liz loses her shit when a guest mistakes her for a server at her party. It pushes Liz to realize that she must take control of her life. And her way of doing that? Joining an improv class run by her husband’s best friend and asking Tobin for a divorce. Realizing she is terrible at improv, Liz decides to ask Tobin to help her practice. As she and Tobin grow closer, Liz begins to think that her social awkwardness might have a more profound meaning. Will she fold with pressure mounting at the wilderness guide company they both work for and in Liz’s personal life? Or will Liz roll with the punches, like improv has taught her? And most importantly, will she be able to save her marriage?

I started this book not liking Liz. The author didn’t give a lot of background to her. She worked with Tobin at the same wilderness guide company but was extremely socially awkward and insecure. But my dislike of her didn’t even last through the first chapter. The author made it almost painfully clear that Liz, for most of her life, was made to feel like she was a spectator in her own life. I loved seeing her character grow throughout the book. By the end of the book, she went from this mousy person who hated confrontation to this self-assured woman. It took Liz a lot of work to get where she was at the end of the book, but it was worth the journey.

Tobin was quickly my favorite character in Rules for Second Chances. He loved Liz and was willing to do anything to fix their marriage (the Little Mermaid scene will be forever etched into my brain). I liked that Tobin wasn’t as confident as he was made out to be. I also liked that he owned his mistakes and that, during one crucial scene, he was willing to let Liz go—because it would make her happy.

I did have characters I didn’t like, but I will touch on two because they were the most prevalent. I was not fond of Tobin’s father and Liz’s older sister. I was furious with both during different parts of the book. Tobin’s father was a piece of work (he was a piece of shit who managed to help ruin their wedding and an anniversary dinner). But Liz’s sister took home the award for the biggest asshole to date. She had her suspicions about Liz having autism, but instead of talking to Liz about it, she sat on it. It wasn’t in a normal conversation when she decided to tell Liz her suspicions. Instead, it was blurted out in an argument, which made it somewhat worse for Liz to hear. The author did attempt to have Liz’s sister redeem herself towards the end of the book. But Tobin’s father jetted and was only mentioned once or twice after that scene.

I loved the secondary storyline that revolved around the improv group and the self-help book. Those were some of the funniest scenes in the book, but they were also some of the most heartbreaking.

I liked how the author handled Liz’s journey through her autism diagnosis. The author’s forward explains that she wrote Liz’s character and autism journey to the best of her ability and that Liz doesn’t portray every adult autism diagnosis.

The end of Rules for Second Chances was terrific. I loved how the author ended things for Tobin and Liz. It was the perfect ending for this book!!

Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press, St. Martin’s Griffin, NetGalley, and Maggie North for allowing me to read and review this ARC of Rules for Second Chances. All opinions stated in this review are mine.

Unfortunately, this book just wasn’t for me. I didn’t really understand the improv plotline and I had a difficult time connecting with the characters and their motivations. Liz’s sister Amber was such a mean, frustrating character I saw red every time she was on the page. And while I appreciated it being a fresh take on a second chance romance, and some moments were funny and enjoyable, this just didn’t work for me.

Rules for Second Chances by Maggie North is a slow and chaotic second chance romance .

Liz and Tobins marriage is on the rocks. Can trying something new help them? What about improv?

There was alot going on in this book, and while I did finish it, it was just not that enjoyable for me.

I did not love this book. I liked the idea and thought it would be just what I needed in this season. I loved the second-chance trope, however, I felt like the characters fell really flat. She’s giving up on her marriage because she doesn’t feel seen - yet still has the ability to have the best sex of her life with said husband? I’d have to really push aside belief on that scenario because I’ve been married for 15 years and I can guarantee the emotional neglect joins you in the bedroom. I also don’t understand that the MC’s BFF is a girl she hooked up with once. The addition of this represented character felt like basic representation and not actual character development.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. Second chance romances are some of my favorites. This is also a marriage in trouble which I also enjoy. In Rules for Second Chances, we follow Liz and Tobin. Liz is more of an introvert and Tobin is her opposite. Everyone loves him and she feels like she disappears into the background. She especially wants her workplace to see her worthy of a promotion she really wants. Liz decides to take an improv course to strengthen her people skills and give her more confidence. Tobin is desperate to save their marriage and suggests they do a step-by-step improv course designed to help marriages in trouble for practice for her and hopefully a second chance for them. This was really a unique idea for a book, but I found myself a little lost. I didn't always get what was happening in the improv scenes and even though information is given about their past, I wasn't really falling in love with Liz and Tobin as a couple enough to pull for them. By the time the roots of their individual problems come to light, it was too late for me.

I have seen others loving this book, so maybe this was just me. I encourage those who love second chance and marriage in trouble romances to give this a try because Rules for Second Chances might just be perfect for another reader.

My sincere thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book and give my unbiased opinion of it in my review.

Liz Lewis knew she needed to fix her life. Her marriage, her job, and her family were all about Liz changing herself to be someone else. Until one day, that wasn't enough for her anymore. Slowly, she rebuilds her family, career, and marriage...based on the tools she learned in improv and a late neurodivergent diagnosis.

Something in this story didn’t quite meet the expectations I had set, but I’m not entirely sure why. It didn’t feel complete, maybe too light in the areas I needed it to be heavier, and too serious where the stakes felt too low. The characters are all well-written, and overall I enjoyed reading the book.

Wilderness guide forced proximity romance?!? i was sold immediately. I really enjoyed this one and read it in about a day. I can’t wait to see what else this author writes!

I started out enjoying this one quite a bit, but as the story went on I began to struggle with it. I haven't read a lot of marriage in crisis books so I found that dynamic interesting. With it, I need to be convinced that the couple's love is still there and can be saved. There wasn't enough there in this story that convinced me of that. It might have helped to have been able to read both POVs. I didn't end up being invested in the happy ending for them.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan Audio, and Netgalley for the review copies. I alternated between the ebook & audiobook for this story.

I can definitely get on board with the premise of this story - entering her 30s, Liz has a decent job and decent marriage, but she’s unsatisfied in both and wants more for herself – to paraphrase The Holiday, she wants to be the leading lady in her own life. As her life spirals apart in an effort to rebuild it, she’s forced to confront some hard truths about her relationships and how she sees the world. Through improv and a relationship-self-help guidebook, she works with her husband on prompts to find out if their marriage is worth saving or if they should both cut and run.

There’s a lot of inner reflection that I found to be quite relatable as a 30-something married woman, which of course made this an emotionally challenging book to read. For the first half of the book, I couldn’t possibly see a way for Liz and Tobin to find a positive pathway forward as they seemed to be such opposites – we later learn they both had battles that made them a strong partnership together. I really appreciated Maggie’s inclusion of adult Autism self-diagnosis – it’s definitely something that I think deserves a louder conversation in society and it was handled with great care in this book. It took me a while to finish this book – at 10 hours, the book itself wasn’t long but I felt I needed more breaks because of how strong my emotional reactions were to the writing.

I've tried three times over a couple of weeks to read this book but I'm finally going to DNF it.

I had high hopes for this story and wrongfully assumed it was more of a Romance but instead it was a mix of family/marital dysfunction that had a very heavy feel to it. The writing and pacing were just off for me as well. And while I like that the author included an neurodivergent FMC, I couldn't connect with her at all and the improv aspect just felt odd and forced.

Since I did not finish this book I will NOT be posting my review on my blog, GoodReads, social media etc.

Thanks to the publisher for this ARC. It just wasn't a good fit for me.

The story was a cute second chance trope. I especially loved that Tobin was the one wanting a second chance with his wife. What a guy! Liz has issues, which are revealed in the narrative. With her job in a shambles, she decides to do improv as a way to jumpstart her career. The book may have been more appealing to me if it had dwelt more on the marriage and less on the improv material.