Back to Before by Tracy Solheim (Second Chances #1)
Contemporary Romance
January 6, 2015
Berkley
Reviewed by Helyce
Gavin McAlister is back home in Chances Inlet, North Carolina to star in a new home restoration reality television show which will showcase the restoration of Dresden House, the town’s historical landmark. It’s absolutely the last thing he’d ever thought he’d be involved in, but when certain facts about the financial stability of the family’s construction company came to light following his father’s death, he didn’t feel like he had much choice in the matter. So he left New York, taking a leave from his successful architecture firm, to come home and save his family’s company.
Having finished a short, six month stint on a popular soap opera as the evil scheming teen Destiny Upchurch, Ginger Walsh is down to her last $500. She calls her best friend Diesel to beg for a job and he hires her immediately to be his personal assistant/makeup artist on the reality show he’s producing. Ginger doesn’t know much about makeup, but the promise of what might be available to Diesel if he’s successful on the home restoration show is enough to have her accept and tag along. Ginger just needs to get through the next 3 months, but from the moment she arrives in the little coastal town of Chances Inlet, and meets the show’s star, her world is turned upside down.
I enjoy a story with a family at the center of it. You can count on certain things when the family in focus is large with protective siblings and a strong matriarch at its head. People are in each others business and it can get nerve wracking, but at the heart of it all–everything that is done is done out of love; even when some of the choices or decisions are questionable. What makes it just one step better is if that family resides in a small town, has done so for years, and that small town has enough gossiping busy-bodies to add to the already overflowing emotions and humor.
We get all that and more in this story.
Gavin has come home for all the right reasons-but he failed to trust in his family and is bearing a huge burden of his father’s legacy all on his own. He’s shared a bit of it with his brother Ryan-but no one really knows everything that has transpired since his father’s death and he plans to keep it that way. If he can just pull off the restoration on Dresden House and complete filming on the restoration show, he can save his mother’s beloved inn and be back to his life in New York in a few short months. But nothing is that easy and the lies and secrets just pile up as time moves along. You can’t help but feel for Gavin. He’s the middle of 5 children and he’s determined to save everyone. He will not settle for anything but the outcome that he feels needs to happen.
Ginger just wants to get through the next 84 days. She needs to help Diesel be a success and get this home reality show off the ground so that Diesel can convince his big shot producer father to give him the reality talent show he’s promised him and in turn she can get the choreographer job that comes with it. Ginger needs Diesel to succeed, because she’s carrying a load of guilt for her part in an accident that ended both her ballet career and Diesel’s music career. Diesel doesn’t blame her, of course, and they both are doing the best they can with the hand they’ve been dealt.
When Ginger and Gavin meet there is definite attraction and once they give in it’s clear that these two have something that is far more than just pheromones and chemistry–but neither of them is looking past the now because they both think they know what their future holds.
While I liked Ginger and Gavin I really had a hard time with the townspeople confusing Ginger for her soap character, Destiny. I thought it was ridiculous and made the community seem stupid. Who is actually going to treat a person like her fictional television persona and expect that her personal self has the same traits? It went into “are you freaking kidding me?” territory when the townsfolk continued to call her Destiny and gave her a lot of crap for things that her television character did to the beloved Savannah Rich, also a soap character. If this was meant to be funny, I didn’t get it and it brought down the story a bit for me. I really thought it was unnecessary that Ginger had to constantly remind people she was not the character she portrayed.
While this authors writing style had all the earmarks I look for in this type of romance, I had the ending figured out by page 32 and that was a bit disappointing for me. After one meeting with one of the locals, I knew what Ginger’s future would be because at only page 32 I knew that Ginger’s love of dancing was too strong for her to totally give it up. What I didn’t know was how Gavin was going to fit in it all.
Back to Before does a good job of focusing on our main characters while introducing us to secondary characters who I hope we will continue see in future books. From Gavin’s siblings, his mother and all the townspeople, to secondary character Lori Hunt-the maid/baker at Gavin’s mother’s inn. Clearly there is more to her than meets the eye and Gavin’s brother Miles seems just a bit too interested in who she is and where she came from for it to be casual.
Another stand out character was teen Cassidy Burroughs. She’s much older than her age due to the fact that her mother is a drug addict and Cassidy has had to take care of herself. She spends a lot of time with Gavin’s mother, Patricia and brought a lot of humor to this story. The subject of bullying is touched upon when a group of boys give Cassidy a hard time-but Cassidy is much smarter than she lets on. In fact, a bit of time is spent on developing Cassidy’s relationship with Ginger as she prepares for the prom where she plans to pull off the ultimate coup d’etat against the boys who’d made her life miserable. But after all the build up-it was virtually ignored with one sentence about the principal finding out and putting a stop to it-another disappointment.
Again, this story had everything I look for in a romance that lives in a small town. There were just a few things that took me out of the story and a too easy to predict ending. But I’m intrigued and will definitely read more from this author.
Rating: C-
Leave a Reply