The Second Chance Café

A Hope Springs Novel

By: Alison Kent

Narrated by: Natalie Ross

Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

Kaylie Flynn was luckier than most children left to the Texas foster care system, blessed with a foster mother who taught her the comfort of home…and the healing power of baking the perfect brownie.

Now, Kaylie has journeyed back to Hope Springs to open a café in the charming Victorian she once shared with her foster family - and to finally find answers about her past and where she came from.

Yet Kaylie’s carefully laid plans quickly become complicated. The house needs far more work than she realized, and Tennessee Keller, the carpenter Kaylie hires, stirs up feelings she hasn’t felt in a long while. When an unexpected crisis threatens to unravel her dreams, Kaylie seems to have all the ingredients for a perfect disaster - or quite possibly the perfect love.

©2013 Alison Kent (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Lovely

I want to call this a sweet romance (and it is!) but there are enough conflicts, obstacles, and hardships to keep it from being too sweeeeeet. I love that I can always count on Alison Kent for real grown up characters who behave like adults -- flawed adults who struggle to work it out and do the right thing.

Narrator Natalie Ross is terrific as usual.

It would be terrific to hear Kent's steamy Dalton Gang trilogy in audio.

A mishmash of stress, worry, and confused story.

I have noooo idea who might want to read/listen to this. It's a disorganized blur of insecurity and confusion. I enjoy all sorts of books, in numerous genres. I like serious books, funny books, educational, and certainly casual books, including fluffy romance or other light reads but this book tries to go in too many conflicting directions.

The narrator is very good though, so no need to blame Ms Ross for it. Good voice, good clear expression etc but all her efforts can't save this story. I will watch for her in other books, but never again with this author! Big disappointment.

I tried so hard to endure this awful book

Would you try another book from Alison Kent and/or Natalie Ross?

Never

What could Alison Kent have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

The characters are unbelievable. Way too much introspection. The heroine has just met the hero and within a day decided he wanted to 'protect her' and that her future plans were in jeopardy. I disliked the inner voice of the heroine a lot. Constant, impossible, unrealistic thoughts.

I am astounded to see the other reviews that are so good and went back, trying to listen to more of the book, but it was impossible.

How could the performance have been better?

I'd have to listen to another performance by the narrator to see if she was part of the problem. I doubt it.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Gorgeous cover, interesting plot. I love books on chefs and people opening little cafe's in small towns.

Any additional comments?

I listen to Audiobooks all the time and am not fussy. So sorry I bought the ebook too!

Romance & a foster child's search for family

Kaylie Flynn has returned home to Hope Springs, Texas, where she lived as a foster child from age ten to age eighteen, in an unusually fortunate foster experience. Having built a successful career and a nice nestegg as baker, she has now bought the old home of her late and much-loved foster parents, Winton and May Wise, to be not only her home, but her new business, the Two Owls Cafe, serving lunch from 10am to 2pm.

She also has another mission, finding out what happened to her birth parents, and why they never came back to get her after the awful events that landed her in foster care.

Hope Springs is a charming town, and the characters are likable and interesting. Having spent ten years in Austin, Kaylie is sometimes surprised at how many people remember her and her foster parents, here in small-town Hope Springs. They also remember her brownies--then and now, her method of dealing with emotional crises is to bake brownies, and then find people to eat them before she can eat them all.

But Kaylie has her own memories, some clear, others buried, and she wants to find out her parents didn't want her. Like many children, she blamed herself for the upheaval of her childhood, and as an adult hasn't shed those feelings.

Old neighbors and classmates, as well as people she didn't meet as a child, become new friends. The hunky contractor the old classmate who became the realtor who sold her the Wise home recommended, Tennessee Keller, is skilled, perceptive of her needs in the renovation, and, oh, yes, very attractive personally as well as physically. Luna Meadows, local maker of a stunningly successful line of hand-weaved wool scarves, becomes a good friend--but turns out to be sitting on a potentially explosive secret. Tenn Keller has his own secrets. Kaylie herself is keeping secrets from her new friends as well as from herself.

Of course this all has to explode over all of them, and the question is whether the relationships she's built, and her new business, are strong enough to survive it.

There were points at which I wanted to give Kaylie, Tenn, Luna, and others whacks upside the head with a clue-by-four, as I felt they were being more obtuse than the reasonable demands of the plot required, but really, I liked them all, and I'm not fond of violence.

Recommended with the above-noted reservation.

I bought this audiobook.

very good

Loved it !! this story. the narrator is so fantastic it's like your really there!! good overall

Wonderful blend of a talented author and narrator!

This book is available, as of 12/2019, on Kindle Unlimited with free Audible Narration.
This is a story that evolves organically with a skillful blending of characters and story lines.
The author has a real talent for creating VIVID backgrounds, events, characters, emotions with a well rounded story.
Kudos on having a GOOD editor.
A careless editor causes breaks in a story, almost like a stutter. Making it hard to stay engaged in a book.
The narrator (Natalie Ross) did a fantastic job with ALL the characters . . . male AND female . . . which, in my experience, is rare.
A GOOD narrator can make or break an audio book.
She has a wide range of pitch levels, intonations, accents and the ability to evoke emotions while drawing you into the authors world seemlessly, with a well trained modulated voice.
I am looking forward to the rest of this series, especially Boy Raised by Wolves! ;-)

Audio keeps pausing

So disappointed! Poor quality! The audio keeps pausing, beginning around 12% It is not my listening device.

Sorry...

Sorry didn’t finish it. Heard about 20 minutes and that was it. Too boring. A very cliche topic. It sounded interesting when I checked the summary in kindle store but it was not interesting at all actually.

Disappointing

This book was spoiled for me by the love interest of the story. He was such an angry man.

Great story, great narration!

I listened to the audio version of this book and really liked it. There is more depth and more intense topics than it seems most people were expecting, going by what this author apparently usually writes. I had no preconceptions and maybe that's why it's a 5 star book for me. It is definitely more Chick Lit (or Women's Literature, if you prefer) than straight up romance. The characters have issues. Deep, dark issues with very serious topics involved.
Having said that, I loved the relationship between the hero and the heroine. There's not a whole lot of trust towards other people for either of them, but there is a definite something between them that allows them to tell each other things from their past that they don't usually discuss. It could be the push towards forgiveness that they both need.
The development of the relationship between Kaylie and Ten (Tennessee) may have been fairly slow, but we're dealing with two fairly messed up people here. It's only right that they are cautious.
Kaylie is finally at a good place in her life and is surrounded by people that care about her. Then everything seems to go to hel_ in a hand basket. Will it be too much for her or can her new happiness be saved?
I really enjoyed the narration by Natalie Ross as well as the story by Kent. I'll be looking for more by both. I was given this audiobook and the comments are honest and my own.