Second Chances

By: Lauren Dane

Narrated by: Isabelle Gordon

Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Ten years ago, Rori Simon left town shy, unattractive, and with zero self-esteem. Now she's back, older, stronger and finally loving herself - and it shows. Hot men are soon knocking at her door, including Jude Callahan, the bad boy who starred in her teenage daydreams... and her adult fantasies.

Jude can't believe the sexy, confident woman before him is actually Rori! She's gotten under his skin like no other woman has... and she brings out secret desires he can't resist. He wants to dominate Rori with every fiber of his being. Wants to own her and pleasure her. To cherish her as he makes her his.

Rori discovers she likes being controlled. She also knows Jude is not a one-woman man. Everything changes when she meets Zach Helm. Edgy, sensual Zach knows just what she needs, and before long, she's in love. Jude watches them together and wonders if he's lost his chance forever.

Previously published, newly revised by author.

©2010 Lauren Dane (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

I'm Stingy With My Stars-This is 5* PERFECTION!

If you could sum up Second Chances in three words, what would they be?

Hot, Sexy, Romance

What did you like best about this story?

The story itself...so much in this genre is written with the 'story' as filler for hot, bedroom scenes. This had several strong twisting pathways and turns.

Have you listened to any of Isabelle Gordon’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

YES! Tracker's Sin: Hell's Eight - she is fantastic in both.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It was a great book drawing on all emotions, flirty & fun, anger, sadness, etc. Extremely well done

Any additional comments?

FYI: There are adult scenarios including D/s along with crass language.

loved it

Great love story, charachters well developed. Narrator is spot on and the romance is hot, Hot, HOT!

Potential to be Great

This story has mixed feeling for me. It started a little flat and I struggled to be drawn into the characters. Rori is someone we can all relate to. She was not popular and struggled with herself confidence and appearance. She is smart and is now come back to her old town and is not taking any crap. Although the author did an ok job developing this character there were some gaps. The Alpha men Zach and Jude were also interesting but I needed more to truly buy into them. Especially Zach they just sort of met and then boom they are a couple. You don’t get the connection at first. I like the bad boy role that Jude plays. But again to you read parts and think did they edit out some details to the story line. I would not call this truly an erotic read. There is BDSM but it is mild. Overall it was a good listen but I am glad I got the book on sale. That made it worth the listen. I think the book gets better as it goes but there was potential for the story to be more. It is a good solid listen.

A good quick read

This book didn’t read the way I thought it would. Jude and Rory have great chemistry and now that she’s returned to town a grown woman, you would think that he was ready for the emotions that she invokes in him, but no, he was a grown man who continually acted like a child when they were dating. Rory on the other hand just got out of a bad relationship and isn’t looking for anything heavy, but when it comes to Jude, the crush she had on him when she was a teenager has morphed into something more as an adult. She thinks she can play a man’s game without repercussions and found out how wrong she was.
When Rory moves on with Zack, Jude finally realizes that he loves her and wants her to be his…but sadly, it’s too late. He has to watch her be another’s man’s everything, but fate has other plans.
The more the story unfolded, I wanted to root for Jude, but Zack was an awesome guy. Sure he had his issues, but he treated Rory like a queen and the life they built was wonderful. However, Rory and Jude will always have a connection and love is always there. When an opportunity presents itself, they come together the way they always should have.

Girl gets boys

In reading the summary, I thought this would be girl gets pretty comes back and gets revenge. Not even close. It was girl leaves town because she is fat and ugly due to mothers bad cooking (even though her older sister was prom queen, head cheerleader etc., guess she was eating elsewhere.) She comes back to town successful writer of sex books, she is now so beautiful that all the men in town fall in love with her. This town by the way is a woman's dream, all the men are in there twenties, muscular and well hung. We are told that Rory, are heroine, is better then the rest of the sluts in town, she has more respect for herself. She proves this by going to her knees on the first date ever time and swallowing. With one guy, on the second date she lets him tie her up, etc. We are then told that she is a very independent girl and she proves this by letting a man give her a collar that marks her as his property. In this town everyone is into Bondage and Submission, so all know when they see Rory's collar that she is his property,but that she is still an independent girl.

At first I thought I would enjoy this book, it started out fairly well, made some good points and seemed halfway intelligent. Chapter Five is an extremely good sex scene. After that it got stupider and stupider. The author often gets sex mixed up with love. The sex gets boring, it is all bondage and submission, which is fine every now and then, but nothing but? These guys need some imagination. You see the plot unfolding way ahead of time and you keep hoping no, don't be so stupid, but no it happens. The author uses cheats to get what she wants to happen to happen.

A Difficult One to Review...

So I loved the story from the beginning to about an hour a half before the end. The narrator was really quite good. Adding her to my list of good narrators. Without spoiling the story, I'll say that it's not quite what you think you're getting. I loved the story of a girl going back home after having come out of her shell and getting the attention of the man she had a huge crush on as a teen but he ends up not living up to the fantasy. Then she finds real love in what I would have called her second chance. It's STEAMY and Sweet. But apparently the author wants to come up with as many second chance opportunites as possible. Whatever happened to HEA. The ending (last 90 min) is rushed and PAINFUL. And just yesterday I was loving the story so much I barely even noticed the god awful traffic had doubled my commute home. So yes, I would recommend this story but don't be somewhere you can't get upset when you get close to the end.

a bit dark

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I purchased this book early on in my audible buys as I bought all I.G. reads. I just love her male voice. this had a good outline, but a bit dark personality for our heroine. I now own more Lauren Dane books and not quite sure why I buy them. I think some paid reviewers have lead me down the wrong path so I have become very cautious to their popular reviews of current stories.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

this was hot and a bit dark at the same time

What does Isabelle Gordon bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

just plain sexy men, what more could you ask for?

Not sure why it was in the erotic section...

I guess it made it into the erotic section because of the bondage stuff...but this book is TAME by normal bondage standards (assuming there are bondage standards), it was pretty vanilla. I really enjoy books that can bring my emotions through and this book does, I was really angry in parts, cried in others and laughed in others. Lauren Dane is an excellent author and Isabelle Gordon did a great job with the narration.

Great steamy book, but made me cry!

Right up to the last hour of this book I would have given it a 5 star rating...then the plot made be bawl hysterically. I don't read fun steamy books to bawl, but I got so invested in the characters, due to the excellent writing and depth of them, that their sorrow became my sorrow....and that actually made me mad.

I would give the steamy scenes a B+, there was bondage, and a sub/dom thing going on, but in a tasteful and non porn kind of way, and over all the plot was very good, and believable.

So, in other words, it wasn't a MUST read of mine, but totally worth the $4.95 I got it on sale for.

Loved it and hated it

Books are for entertainment and by all means this book is entertaining. When a scene can make a zing go right to your nether parts that's some pretty good stuff and it's all good to me but I hate crying and this book did both; hence loving and hating it.

The D/s is pretty good even it goes way too fast to be remotely realistic but the BDSM is kind of hot.