A Season for Second Chances

Another Christmas-set contemporary romance from Bayliss (The Twelve Dates of Christmas). Fortysomething Annie Sharpe has it all: a husband, two grown children, and a successful restaurant. But it all comes crashing down the night she catches her husband cheating—right on one of her restaurant’s tables. Humiliated, Annie spirals into a depression but soon finds her feet when she gets the opportunity to house-sit for a year in the quaint seaside town of Willow Bay. Almost immediately, she’s taken under the wing of the charming locals; with their encouragement, she reopens the local café. Along the way she joins a book club, has a disastrous date with a local window washer, and butts heads with grumpy but attractive John Granger, the nephew of her house’s owner. The story meanders through Annie’s first autumn with the slow pace of British village life, giving plenty of room for the quirky townsfolk to feel like old friends.