When reading romance novels, there’s probably nothing that beats second chance romance books. These stories are all about lost love, missed opportunities, and the power of fate to bring two people back together. From heartwarming love stories to wholesome getting back together tales to steamy stories of passion, there are books about second chance romance for everyone.
In these second chance romance books, you’ll find characters who are given a second chance at love after years apart. Maybe they were high school sweethearts who drifted apart, or perhaps they were once deeply in love but were torn apart by circumstance. Whatever the reason for their separation, these characters find their way back to each other, often against all odds.
As a reader, you’ll be swept up in their journey as they rediscover their feelings for each other and work to build a new future together. So, if you’re looking for a great romance novel to curl up with, look no further than this curated list of the most popular second chance romance novels!
Best Second Chance Romance Books in 2024
1. Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren
Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious, if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, and keep her head down and heart tucked away.
But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly, bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother… only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.
Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they become strangers to one another until their chance reunion.
2. Happy Place by Emily Henry
Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.
They broke up six months ago, and they still haven’t told their best friends, so they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade.
It is their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week, they leave behind their daily lives, eat copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood, and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.
Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together there. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week… in front of those who know you best?
3. Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone’s surprise, shows up in New York.
When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising their past buried traumas and the eyebrows of New York’s Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can’t deny their chemistry – or that they’ve been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since.
Over the next seven days, in the middle of a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect, but Eva’s not sure how she can trust the man who broke her heart, and she needs to get him out of New York so that her life can return to normal. But before Shane disappears again, there are a few questions she needs answered!
4. Love Her or Lose Her by Tessa Bailey
Rosie and Dominic Vega are the perfect couple: high school sweethearts, best friends, madly in love. Well, they used to be, anyway. Now, Rosie’s lucky to get a caveman grunt from the ex-soldier whenever she walks in the door.
Dom is faithful and a great provider, but the man she fell in love with 10 years ago is nowhere to be found. When her girlfriends encourage Rosie to demand more out of life and pursue her dream of opening a restaurant, she decides to demand more out of love, too—three words: marriage boot camp.
Never in a million years did Rosie believe her stoic, too-manly-to-emote husband would agree to relationship rehab with a weed-smoking hippie. Dom talking about feelings? Sitting on pillows? Communing with nature? Learning love languages? Nope. But to her surprise, he’s all in, and it forces her to admit her own role in their cracked foundation.
As they complete one ridiculous – yet surprisingly helpful – assignment after another, their remodeled relationship gets stronger than ever. Except just as they’re getting back on track, Rosie discovers Dom has a secret… and it could demolish everything.
5. It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover
Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up—she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.
Ryle is assertive, stubborn, and maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt.
Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.
As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan—her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.
Related: It Ends With Us Series in Order
6. Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life a decade ago, that has felt too true. Instead of glittering summers on the lakeshore of her childhood, she spends them in a stylish apartment in the city, going out with friends and keeping everyone a safe distance from her heart.
Until she receives the call that sends her racing back to Barry’s Bay and into the orbit of Sam Florek—the man she never thought she’d have to live without.
For six summers, through hazy afternoons on the water and warm summer nights working in his family’s restaurant and curling up with books—medical textbooks for him and work-in-progress horror short stories for her—Percy and Sam had been inseparable. Eventually, that friendship turned into something breathtakingly more, before it fell spectacularly apart.
When Percy returns to the lake for Sam’s mother’s funeral, their connection is as undeniable as it had always been. But until Percy can confront the decisions she made and the years she’s spent punishing herself for them, they’ll never know whether their love might be bigger than the biggest mistakes of their past.
7. Paradise by Judith McNaught
Corporate raider Matthew Farrell had come a long way from the poor, scruffy kid of Indiana’s steel mills. A long way from the country club where, feeling like an outsider, he had dared to fall in love with a beautiful blonde named Meredith Bancroft and known a once-in-a-lifetime passion and betrayal that still haunted his memory.
Now world leaders courted him, the media watched his every move, and he was ready to move in on the Bancroft empire.
An excellent, poised executive in her family’s legendary department store chain, Meredith had once defied her father for the sexually magnetic, intense Matt Farrell, and their brief, ill-fated marriage was the disastrous outcome.
Now, as a hostile takeover threatens the Bancroft firm, Meredith is forced to confront Matt. As tensions build between them, bittersweet memories rise to the surface, leaving them suspicious, restless, and uncertain. Will they be able to believe in each other and grasp the tender miracle that is before them?
8. The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams
Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott’s marriage is in major league trouble. He recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife, Thea, has always faked the Big O.
When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw in their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him.
Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville’s top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it’ll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back his wife’s trust.
9. Forget Me Not by Julie Soto
Ama Torres loves being a wedding planner. But with a mother who has been married more times than you can count on your fingers, Ama has decided that marriage is not the route for her. But weddings? Weddings are amazing. As a small business owner, she can match her clients with the perfect vendor to give them the wedding of their dreams. Well, almost perfect…
Elliot hates being a florist, most of the time. When his father left him the flower shop, he considered it a burden, but he’s stuck with it, just like how he’s stuck with how he proposed to Ama, his main collaborator and girlfriend (or was she?) two years ago. But flowers have grown on him, just like Ama did. And flowers can’t run off and never speak to him again, like Ama did.
When Ama is hired to plan a celebrity wedding that will bring her business national exposure, there’s a catch: Elliot is already contracted to design the flowers.
Things are not helped by the two brides, who see the obvious chemistry between Ama and Elliot and are determined to set them up, not knowing their complicated history. Add in a meddling ex-boss and a reality TV film crew documenting every step of the wedding prep, and Ama and Elliot’s hearts are not only in jeopardy again, but this time, their livelihoods are, too.
10. People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry
Poppy and Alex have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends.
For most of the year, they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.
Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she could get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?
Related: All Emily Henry Books in Order
11. The Mistake by Elle Kennedy
College junior John Logan can get any girl he wants. For this hockey star, life is a parade of parties and hookups, but behind his killer grins and easygoing charm, he hides growing despair about the dead-end road he’ll be forced to walk after graduation.
A sexy encounter with freshman Grace Ivers is just the distraction he needs, but when a thoughtless mistake pushes her away, Logan plans to spend his final year proving to her that he’s worth a second chance. Now he’s going to need to up his game!
After a less-than-stellar freshman year, Grace is back at Briar University, older, wiser, and so over the arrogant hockey player she nearly handed her V-card to. She’s not a charity case and not the quiet butterfly she was when they first hooked up. If Logan expects her to roll over and beg like all his other puck bunnies, he can think again!
12. Count Your Lucky Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur
Margot Cooper doesn’t do relationships. She tried, and it blew up in her face, so she’ll stick with casual hookups. But now her entire crew has found “the one,” and she’s beginning to feel like a fifth wheel. And then fate intervenes!
While touring a wedding venue with her engaged friends, Margot comes face-to-face with Olivia Grant—her childhood friend, her first love, her first… well, everything. It’s been ten years, but the moment they lock eyes, Margot’s cold, dead heart thumps in her chest.
Olivia must be hallucinating. In the decade since she last saw Margot, her life hasn’t gone exactly as planned. At almost thirty, she’s been married… and divorced. However, a wedding planner job in Seattle means a fresh start and a chance to follow her dreams. Never in a million years did she expect her important new client’s Best Woman would be the one that got away.
When a series of unfortunate events leaves Olivia without a place to stay, Margot offers her spare room because she’s a Very Good Person. Obviously, it has nothing to do with Olivia being as beautiful as ever, and the sparks between them still make Margot tingle.
13. You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle
Naomi Westfield has the perfect fiancé: Nicholas Rose holds doors open for her, remembers her restaurant orders, and comes from the kind of upstanding society family any bride would love to be a part of. They never fight. They’re preparing for their lavish wedding that’s three months away. And she is miserably and utterly sick of him.
Naomi wants out, but there’s a catch: whoever ends the engagement will have to foot the nonrefundable wedding bill. When Naomi discovers that Nicholas, too, has been feigning contentment, the two of them go head-to-head in a battle of pranks, sabotage, and all-out emotional warfare.
But with the countdown looming to the wedding that may or may not come to pass, Naomi finds her resolve slipping. Because now that they have nothing to lose, they’re finally being themselves—and having fun with the last person they expect: each other.
14. The Plight Before Christmas by Kate Stewart
Clark Griswold was onto something, at least with his annual holiday meltdown. And since the last three weeks of my life have been riddled with humbug—another breakup, a broken toe, an office promotion I deserved and didn’t get—I’m not at all in the mood to celebrate nor have the happiest Christmas EVER.
When Mom insisted that we all gather at my Grandparents’ ancient cabin for an old-school family Christmas, I fully intended to get into the holiday spirit with the help of the three wise men: Johnnie Walker, Jack Daniels, and Jim Beam. But those boys did nothing to offset the shock or temper the sting of seeing my EX on our doorstep on the first day of our holiday soiree.
Stuck for a week with the man who obliterated my heart nearly two decades ago, I did the only thing I could do and put on my game face, thankful for the home advantage.
I knew better than to drink that last cup of eggnog. I knew better than to get tongue-tangled beneath the mistletoe with the only man ever to break my heart. I knew better than to sleep with Satan’s wingman on the eve of the Lord’s birthday.
I could blame the nog. I could blame the deceitful light blue eyes, thick, angelic hair, and panty-evaporating smirk…but mostly, I blame Eli because he always knew exactly which of my buttons to push!
15. Say You’ll Stay by Corinne Michaels
One word.
Stay.
It was all he had to do. Instead, he got on that bus and took my heart with him. That was seventeen years ago.
I moved on. Marriage. Kids. White picket fence. Everything I ever wanted, but my husband betrayed me, and I was left once again.
Alone, penniless, and with two boys, I had no choice but to return to Tennessee. He wasn’t supposed to be there. I should’ve been safe. However, fate has a way of stepping in.
This time around, the tables are turned. It’s my decision. Second chances do exist, but I don’t know if we can repair what’s already been broken!
16. The Infinity Between Us by N.S. Perkins
Eighteen years of summers spent in a beach house in Ogunquit, Maine, have brought Violet Mitchell and Will Seaberg together. They spent every waking minute together for two perfect, beach-filled months every year. First as friends, until one summer changed everything.
But before the two even had a chance to claim the love they’d spent their entire lives creating, disaster struck, tearing the two lovers—and their families—apart.
Heartbroken and haunted by the memories of that fateful summer, Violet struggles to move on from the past. Still, she promises herself never to contact Will again. But five years later, when Violet arrives to finalize the sale of the property, she finds Will right where she left him: sun-kissed, loving, and so incredibly sorry.
At first, she wants nothing to do with him, but Violet soon realizes that it’s inevitable and that the past she was running away from might hold the key to the love and the happiness she believed was stolen from her five summers ago.
17. Will They or Won’t They by Ava Wilder
Lilah Hunter and Shane McCarthy are madly in love—at least, their characters are. As the stars of the hit paranormal TV show Intangible, they spent years pining for each other on-screen… until Lilah ditched the show at the end of season five in hopes of becoming a film star.
With no such luck, she’s back to film the much-hyped ninth and final season, in which their characters will finally get together. But coming back means facing one of the biggest reasons she left: Shane.
Ever since their secret behind-the-scenes fling imploded at the end of the first season, the two of them have despised each other.
Now, back on set together for the first time in years, with the world’s eyes on them and their post-show careers on the line, they’ll have to grit their teeth and play nice. But under pressure to give Intangible’s fans the happy ending they’ve been waiting for Lilah and Shane are forced to get closer than ever. And if they’re not careful, they just might get blindsided by one final twist: a real-life happy ending of their own.
Conclusion
Congratulations! You’ve reached the end of our list of the best second chance romance books. We hope you found a book or two that caught your eye and that you’re excited to read.
Remember, second chance romance books are all about hope, forgiveness, and the power of love. They offer a chance for characters to right past wrongs and find happiness with the ones they love. Whether you’re a fan of childhood sweethearts, high school reunions, or lovers torn apart by circumstance, there’s a second chance romance book out there for you.
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