First Love, Second Chance

by Colin Shindler

Eighteen years ago, Tom Johnson returned to California from Oxford and broke Julia's heart. Mike Ramsey picked up the pieces, but a family tragedy has left their marriage slowly disintegrating to the point where they can hardly bear to touch one another. Mike takes refuge on the golf course with their teenage son; Julia in fantasies of her lost lover. Then she learns that Tom is divorced and still thinking about her, and an old friend gives her Tom's card. A work trip to San Francisco will take her just fifty miles from his vineyard in the Napa Valley - but should she risk the consequences of seeking him out?

440 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Stuart Aken · Rating 4 out of 5]

• FIRST LOVE, SECOND CHANCE by Colin Schindler, Headline
346 pps. 25 chaps. 100,000 words.
A story of love, family, loss and the eternal triangle. Very good characterisation and empathetic drawing of the main players, both men and women. An excellent portrayal of the relationship between father and son and a heart-rending depiction of the effects of the death of a child on the rest of the family. The story is one of passionate first love continuing in a dream in the mind of one partner when they’re separated by circumstances beyond their control, then affecting their new lives until crisis points and connections bring them back together. The separate sets of partners then have to decide whether they want what they have had for years or whether the promise of what they had as young lovers is more desirable. The denouement is apposite and satisfying and the ending of the story is unambiguous and apt. Thoroughly enjoyed this and couldn’t put it down. Unconditionally recommend.

[JenniferB]

ok - but writing disjointed in parts and quite cliched. Some good aspects though