13 Heartwarming second-chance romances

Any avid romance reader can tell you that the road to happily ever isn’t always smooth. Sometimes, it’s years and years in the making. But that certainly doesn’t make the journey any less exciting! For all you readers out there who, like us, can’t get enough second-chance romance reads, here are our picks for the best-of-the-best:

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When We Collide
Author: AL Jackson

Amazon blurb:
William has spent six years running from his past and the last eight months trying to rid his mind of the dreams that increasingly haunt his nights. Trapped in a world of false ambitions and feigned affections, William knows he’s reached a breaking point and something’s going to give.
 
Maggie had lived her entire life without hope until one man showed her what it meant to be loved. He’d been her light in a lifetime of darkness. Six years ago, that darkness stole him away. Without him, she’s surrendered herself to an existence she doesn’t know how to escape.
 
When the family William left behind is struck by tragedy, he is called back to the one place he’s sworn to never return to again.​

In a moment that will change his life forever, William comes face to face with the girl who, with one look, captured his heart. He is unable to ignore the buried desires and the hope for the future they’d once believed they’d have. 
 
Now William is ready to fight to take back what had been stolen from him six years before. But he never imagined what that fight might cost him.

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Tortured
Author: Nicole Williams
 
Amazon blurb:
When he left for a twelve-month deployment, she knew it would feel like forever before they saw each other again. She didn’t realize how right she was.
 
When Lance Corporal Brecken Connolly gets taken as a POW, Camryn hopes for the best but steels herself for the worst. In the end, steel was what she needed to survive when he didn’t. She moves on the only way she knows how—gilding herself in more steel.
 
Years go by.
She builds a new life.
She leaves the old one behind.
 
Until one day, she sees the face of a ghost on the news. Brecken seems to have risen from the dead, but she knows she can’t perform the same miracle for herself. 

While Brecken was held in a torture camp for the past five years, she’s been trapped in her own kind of prison. 
 
The man she mourned comes back to join the living, but the girl he wanted to spend his life with isn’t the same woman he comes back for. Brecken isn’t the same person either. The past five years have changed them both. While he’s determined to put the pieces back together, she’s resolved to let hers rot where they shattered. 
 
Broken or not, Brecken wants her back. He’ll do anything to achieve that. Even if it means going against the warden of Camryn’s personal prison—her husband.

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Fighting to Forget
Author: JB Salsbury
 
Amazon blurb:
Every fighter is drawn to the violence, the release that a perfect hit can bring.
 
But very few are drawn to the pain.
 
Rex Carter lives behind a wall of indifference. The demons from his childhood act as an anesthetic, keeping him distant from emotional connections. Only the ache from a knock to the jaw, the sting of a tattoo needle, or the heat from a piercing can jolt him back from the numbness. The fiery pain is all he can feel, and nothing compares to the burn.
 
Or so he thought.
 
Working in a Las Vegas bar isn't Georgia McIntyre's dream. But she hopes it'll be an end to the nightmare.

She's watched him, followed him and kept tabs, all in preparation for this moment: to make amends and share the secret she’s been carrying since she was a kid. But she didn't count on the feelings that seeing him again would stir up, the vacant look in his stormy-blue eyes, and his perfect body now mutilated by ink and metal.
 
And she knows why. She's lived his pain every single day, since the day he left.
 
Changed by time, Rex doesn't remember the girl from his past. If only she could do the same.
 
Will she get the absolution she's spent her life seeking?
 
Or will he continue Fighting to Forget?

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Wicked Heart
Author: Leisa Rayven
 
Amazon blurb:
Liam Quinn is one of the biggest movie stars in the world…and the only man Elissa Holt has ever truly loved.

After being out of her life for six years, he and his gorgeous fiancé are set to star in the new Broadway show Elissa is stage managing. The only trouble is, when late night rehearsals bring Elissa and Liam together, the line between what is and what could have been gets blurred. Now one moment of weakness is about to create a scandal that will echo around the world.

Elissa knows that falling for Liam again would be a tragedy in the making, but as any good romantic knows, love doesn’t always follow the script.

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The Story of Us
Author: Tara Sivec
 
Amazon blurb:
1,843 days. That's how long I survived in that hellhole. They tried to break me, but I resisted. And I owe it all to the memory of warm summer nights, the scent of peaches, and the one woman who loved me more than I ever deserved to be loved. Now, I'll do anything to get back to her.
 
Only Shelby Eubanks isn't the girl I left behind all those years ago. She's someone else, a stranger. My Shelby-my little green-eyed firecracker-would never give up her dreams, would never disappear into her mother's ambitions. But I won't give up on her. On us. I may be broken, and scarred, and not the man I used to be, but I will do whatever it takes to remind her of the story of us.

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Before We Were Strangers
Author: Renee Carlino
 
Amazon blurb:
To the Green-eyed Lovebird:
 
We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House.
 
You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more.
 
We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other.
 
Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. ​

We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding…
 
I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello.
 
After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half?
 
M

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All of Me
Author: Callie Harper
 
Amazon blurb:
Seven years is supposed to change the way you feel.

Sophie’s not supposed to still dream about the way Liam touched her or the way they moved together. When she heads back to Naugatuck Island, she assumes Liam doesn’t even live there any more. Whatever he once felt, it has to have grown cold by now.

But Liam’s a firefighter. He knows better than anyone, never underestimate the power of a blaze. Those embers may appear cold, but nothing is ever as it seems. Those embers? They're just waiting to burst into flames.

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Once Loved
Author: Cecy Robson
 
Amazon blurb:
Every memory Lety Tres Santos has from her childhood comes with a scar—some emotional, some physical. Her father is an abusive drug addict, and her mother enables his destructive behavior. College offers Lety a fresh start . . . until her father finds a way to ruin that, too. Now, after losing her scholarship to kick off junior year, Lety must somehow stay in school, pay tuition, and turn a deaf ear to the whispers that follow her. And she intends to do it all without Brody Quaid’s help.
 
Brody is a lacrosse star, a 4.0 student—and as a freshman, he fell hard for the beautiful and spirited Lety. But their relationship crashed and burned because he couldn’t break through the walls she’s put up around her heart. With Lety hurting more than ever, Brody strives to win her back and make her believe in real love and true partnership. ​

That will mean opening up secrets locked away in his own past—and trusting someone more than he’s ever dared.
 
Lety knows how painful it can be to depend on the wrong man. She also knows how much Brody wants to do this the right way. But it takes more than sizzling desire to move on and build a future together.

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Until We Fly
Author: Courtney Cole
 
Amazon blurb:
Ex-Army Ranger, Brand Killien, has always been good.
 
A good friend, a good soldier, a good everything. .
The problem is, good hasn’t gotten him anything but a crushed heart.
 
So after licking his wounds, he decides to move on. And moving on doesn’t include being good anymore.
 
Jaded and detached, Brand is determined to never open himself up to anyone again. It’s not worth the pain. Instead, he becomes closed, hardened, aloof.
 
But then he’s called back home for a family emergency… a family that he is estranged from. A family that he put out of his mind a long time ago for very good reasons…reasons that involve secrets and pain. Reasons he tried hard to forget.

But home is where the heart is, and it just might be where Brand finds his again. 
 
Why? Because home is where Nora Greene is. A fiery, red-headed spitfire, Nora is a thing from his past. A beautiful, feisty thing. When Brand left, she was away at boarding school. 
 
But she’s back now. 
 
And she wants Brand, scars and all.

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Always Been Mine
Author: Elizabeth Reyes
 
Amazon blurb:
After one heartache too many, Valerie Zuniga vows to never let Alex Moreno hurt her again. A year later, she is forced to reunite with him at a party where one unexpected sizzling kiss confirms she's far from over him. No way will she allow herself to get sucked back into that torment. She'll resist him even if that means using the one thing that'll stop Alex dead in his tracks: another man.
 
Alex is coming off one of the worst years of his life. He spent so much time wallowing in self-pity, he never realized how much he'd missed Valerie. That is, until that kiss. Now, he's determined to get her back one way or another, and no other man will stand in his way. Especially after discovering that Valerie may be in danger, a danger he blames himself for.

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Bittersweet
Author: Sarina Bowen
 
Amazon blurb:
 
The last person Griffin Shipley expects to find stuck in a ditch on his Vermont country road is his ex-hookup. Five years ago they’d shared a couple of steamy nights together. But that was a lifetime ago.
 
At twenty-seven, Griff is now the accidental patriarch of his family farm. Even his enormous shoulders feel the strain of supporting his mother, three siblings and a dotty grandfather. He doesn’t have time for the sorority girl who’s shown up expecting to buy his harvest at half price.
 
Vermont was never in Audrey Kidder’s travel plans. Neither was Griff Shipley. But she needs a second chance with the restaurant conglomerate employing her. Okay—a fifth chance. And no self-righteous lumbersexual farmer will stand in her way.

They’re adversaries. They want entirely different things from life. Too bad their sexual chemistry is as hot as Audrey’s top secret enchilada sauce, and then some.

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Epic Love
Author: Trudy Stiles
 
Amazon blurb:
HEATH STRICKLAND, the son of a prominent district attorney, lived his life surrounded by violence and crime. He was an unwilling witness to the corrupt lives his father swore to prosecute and keep behind bars. His escape was his music, which eventually led him to replace the iconic singer of the world famous band, Epic Fail.
 
NOELLE DURAND lived in luxury, growing up on a sprawling estate, with everything she could ever want or need. Her life, to everyone else, seemed perfect. Perfect house. Perfect things. Perfect family. But nothing at all was perfect. She lived in hell. A hell that nobody on the outside could see.
 
As a neighbor and childhood friend, Heath would have done anything for Noelle. He would have given up the world to protect her and keep her safe.

Their friendship grew into something that neither of them expected. But then she suddenly disappeared, vanishing from his life as if she never existed. He never stopped hoping that one day she would resurface, alive and well. But as time went by, and her family gave up hope, he surrendered his heart to his lost love.
 
Twelve years later, one phone call changes everything.

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Kiss Marry Kill
Author: Sidney Halston
 
Amazon blurb:
He's been chasing a memory . . .
 
It was just supposed to be a regular Thursday afternoon…and then he saw her. Sitting in seat L214, one seat over from his at the baseball game, right next to her douche of a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. An impromptu kiss for the kiss cam, and Jax knew his life would never be the same. Five years and a tour in Afghanistan later, Jax is back stateside running his own private security firm, Iron-Clad, with his best friend. He isn't the man he used to be... but Megan isn't the sexy and sweet, though sheltered, twenty-two-year-old he left behind, either. And she's in trouble.
 
...but now they're on the run.
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Megan Cruz has made something of herself. She’s turned her dreams of pop stardom into a reality. But when a deadly stalker breaks into her home claiming to be her number-one fan, the only person she can turn to is the boy who got away. But Jax isn’t the same carefree charmer who stole her heart, then broke it when he joined the military. This man is seductive, hard, guarded. And he'll do anything to protect what's his.

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Did we miss any of your favorites? Let us know! We’d love to hear from you.