A Year of Second Chances by Kendra Smith @KendraAuthor @Aria_Fiction #LoveBooks

🌸 A Year of Second Chances by Kendra Smith 🌸

Three women. Three very different lives. One life-changing adventure.

Charlie is a single mum unlucky in life. Her multiple jobs make barely enough to feed the family cat, never mind being able to give her son the life he deserves. So when an opportunity to make a lot of cash comes along, she simply has to take it.

Suzie has always wanted to be a mother. But fate has been cruel and now time is running out. Soon her final frozen egg will be destroyed and her last chance of having a baby will go with it. With her husband resolved to their childless life Suzie takes matters into her own hands.

Dawn is about to turn fifty and seems to have misplaced her mojo along with the car keys. But with an interfering mother-in-law and a gaggle of judgemental mums at her children’s school, it’s proving harder to find than a decent fitting bra. Especially after a series of highly embarrassing incidents…

Over the course of a year three lives are about to collide and as they do be prepared to laugh, cry and fall in love with these women as they discover how life can give you a second chance.

Perfect for fans of Lucy Diamond, Marian Keyes, Sophie Kinsella and Paige Toon.

🌸 Q&A with Kendra Smith 🌸

Where did the inspiration come from for your new release?

The inspiration came from life (I am endlessly fascinated by the strength women show who are trying for children), from newspaper articles, from (ahem) my then school for my kids, from the joy of being able to set your characters on a ‘stage’ and move them in the name of fiction – taking them to places that you wouldn’t go yourself but where the ‘what if’ starts to happen… I wanted strong female characters who were feisty but fallible (who isn’t?) and I wanted to show that out of tricky situations, hope, friendship, and new beginnings can arise.  I had wanted to write a multi-viewpoint novel for a while, so it was a learning curve, but I enjoyed weaving my women’s stories together. One of my absolute favourite authors, Liane Moriarty, pulls this off with aplomb and I wanted to challenge myself.

How does it feel to know your characters are out and about in reader’s imaginations?

Actually, it’s really amazing to know they are ‘alive and kicking’ because they have been in my head for so long!  One of them has made me laugh a few times, and another of them (a minor male character) I’ve had a lot of fun with! He’s allowed me hours of sniggering, working out how a foreigner might misconstrue & mispronounce typical British idioms. You know, ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’ and so on as he looks heavenward to see if the sky is producing poodles.

Do you miss writing about them?

Yes! So maybe there’s a sequel in there somewhere…

What was your publishing journey highlight?

Hmm. You might just want to pull up a chair for this. The long version of events is in my acknowledgements for A Year of Second Chances. But the short version is: half-written book, head-on car crash, surgery, edit book some more, surgery, submit book, 4-book deal from Aria Fiction – definitely a highlight. Lots of crying (the good kind.)

What was the last book that made you laugh out loud?

This is Going to Hurt, by the hilarious Adam Kay. Was literally shaking with laughter in bed the other night – and very glad that I was now OUT of hospital!  

What was the last book that made you cry?

Not so much books as I tend to read HEAs. But movies, or TV ads… did someone say peri-menopause…?

If you were on an island for a year what two books would you bring?

The Art of Blowdrying your Hair with no Hairdryer

A notebook for my next novel…

Lastly, what is your favourite book quote?

‘Easy reading is damn hard writing.’

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Couldn’t agree more.

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