Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the ALC of Rules for Second Chances by Maggie North. All opinions are my own. 

I chose to read this book because the synopsis sounded cute. I haven’t read many romance books with the marriage in crisis trope, but the ones I have read, I enjoyed. Unfortunately, this book just wasn’t for me. 

The idea of this book is unique and interesting, but the execution was not great for me. I ended up only reading 60% of this book and just couldn’t make myself finish it. 

I think my biggest issue was the characters in this story. 

Liz and Tobin had such a weird marriage. On one hand, they seemed to know certain things about each other that no one else knew. On the other hand, they often acted like they didn’t know each other at all. They didn’t feel like a married couple, so I had a hard time rooting for them. The chemistry just wasn’t there, and they didn’t really suit each other. 

None of the other characters really stood out to me except Liz’s sister, which I really disliked. She was so mean to Liz all the time even though Liz did so many things for her. 

Also, while I think the improv idea is unique, it ended up feeling very weird reading about it. 

Side note: one thing that always pulls me out of a story and makes me angry is when characters are bad pet owners. I did not like how Liz and her family treated their cat and were so irresponsible with it. 

The narrator for this story was fine, but the narration didn’t stand out to me. I was able to easily understand them while listening at 2x speed though. 

Overall, I think some readers will really enjoy this story, but this book just wasn’t for me. 

The characters were too immature.

This book has been more smut than plot so far. It’s just too spicy for me.

Love the characters, but it was too spicy for me.

I just was bored and didn’t care about the characters and plot. 

I’m just so confused with all of these time jumps, and I don’t care about what’s going on. 

I was just bored and didn’t like any of the characters.

I typically love her books, but this book was pretty gross. It was all about lust, and I just couldn’t listen to anymore of it. 

While I was enjoying this story, the content is just way too graphic. Not only was there too much spice, but the way people and animals were treated was too much for me.

I hated the characters. Chelsea was so selfish and such an immature jerk. Basil was okay but has no good reason for liking Chelsea. Also, I felt that the author stereotyped Christians and wrote some anti-Christian comments that I hated.