Tour Stop: Second Chance by Katie Kacvinsky

Title: Second Chance (First Comes Love #2)

Author: Katie Kacvinsky

Publication Date: September 7th 2012

Genre: Young Adult

Blurb:

Can two drastically different, imperfect people be perfect for each other?

It’s been four months since Gray and Dylan have seen each other. Dylan’s been traveling in Europe, while Gray has college, baseball, and a life rooted in one place. Gray’s determined to forget Dylan, the girl he fell in love with in First Comes Love. Besides, how do you make a relationship work with an independent loner?

Just when he decides he’s over her, Dylan makes an unexpected entrance back into his life, hoping their steamy romance can start right where it left off. Gray realizes you can tell your mind to do one thing, but you can’t always convince your heart to follow. Dylan realizes she finally has to make a choice between freedom and her relationship with Gray.

Hilarious, intense, inspiring, and emotional, Second Chance shows that love is a journey, and there are never clear road signs or maps to guide you along. You can only navigate with your heart.

Excerpt:

DYLAN

I stretch out on the leather train seat and sip the thick, rich coffee Europe’s famous for. I open my journal to a blank, white page. The paper looks like a canvas spread out, waiting for me to create a painting with words. Lately I’ve been thinking about love because it charges me and surrounds me and I crave it, follow it, live for it. Love is the only drug that’s healthy to overdose on.

Which brings me to my random thought for the day:

I think falling in love should come with a warning label: CAUTION—side effects may include sporadic singing in public (specifically Celine Dion covers), emotional intoxication, constant fool grinning, stomach flipping, eye twinkling, heart palpitations, sweaty hands, jittery feet, lack of sleep, giddiness, deep sighs of contentment, sexual fantasizing, uncontrollable bouts of happiness, and the need to help everyone else around you fall in love so they can experience this blissful state. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery under the influence of love, due to lightheadedness and daydreaming.

I close my journal and take a bite of a chocolate bar that’s cold from sitting next to the drafty train window. Chocolate has become my new best friend. It’s sweeter and creamier than chocolate in the U.S. Each bite is like dressing your mouth in sugary velvet. It’s almost as good as kiss. Maybe that’s why I crave it—it’s a dietary supplement for when I’m away from Gray.

I peer out the window into a dark landscape dusted with lights in the distance, the city of Prague hovering in front of my fingers. I press my hand against the cold glass and try to connect the dots of the city skyline. Traveling gives me this natural high, like all my senses are heightened down to the end of my fingertips. I crave it like food, as if it’s what propels me forward, what nourishes my body. Traveling is like leaving one world that’s black and white and walking into another one drenched in color because everything is so new it becomes enchanting.

The train starts to slow down as it approaches Prague’s station, and my feet tap anxiously on the ground. I can’t sit still. Maybe it’s the air—cold and dense and rich with mystery and texture. Maybe it’s the sense of this new city I’m about to meet, like a stranger I want to get to know. Maybe it’s the third cup of coffee I’ve had in the last hour.

It’s amazing to think where adventure can lead when you trust your crazy ideas, when you’re bold enough to look at only what lies ahead of you. I don’t want the normal life. I don’t want to go to college because it’s the next practical step, just to join the pack, just to follow a leader. I don’t want to sit inside a room under fluorescent lights and study and read and memorize other people’s ideas about the world. I want to form my own ideas. I want to experience the world with my own eyes.

I’m not going to follow my old friends to avoid the effort of making new ones. I don’t want to settle for any job just to get a paycheck, just to pay rent, just to need furniture and cable and more bills and be tied down with routine and monotony. I don’t want to own things because they’ll eventually start to own me.

Most importantly, I don’t want to be told who I am or who I should be. I want to find myself—the bits and pieces that are scattered in places and in people waiting to meet me. If I fall down, I’ll learn how to pick myself up again. You need to fall apart once in a while before you understand how you best fit together.

Few people understand what to make of me.

Except for one.

The more people I meet, the more I’m realizing how rare it is to find someone who lets you be yourself. Who never tries to hold you back, but watches you ride out the wave of intensity and see where it takes you. Gray never held me back. He was like a drug. He lit me up like a catalyst, and I can’t go a day without thinking about him. Half of my journal entries are addressed to him. I take most of my pictures just so I can show him the places I’ve been. I’ve never missed anyone before. I try not to dwell on past memories; instead I focus on making new ones. But now I realize that distance is like a test. If you miss someone, it means you love him. It’s that simple.

I can’t wait to see him again and tell him our story is just beginning.

Growing.

Destined for happily ever after.

I lean my forehead against the cool train window and watch the city lights blink

past me in the dark sky. My shoulders rock forward as the train grinds and brakes to a stop.

I stretch my sore legs and roll my luggage into a filthy train station, but I’m filthy too, so I can’t complain. I grin at the atmosphere around me, the clattering sounds of languages I can’t understand, the bustle of passengers, people moving along with me like we’re all just cells, pushing our way together through a giant artery. I love meeting a city for the first time at night and seeing it dressed up with lights. It gives me time to imagine the rest of it before it greets me in daylight.

I head towards the street entrance, hail a cab, and find myself on a cobblestone street in front of the Czech Inn Hostel. Even though we meet for the first time and I’m thousands of miles from anyone I know, I feel like I’m home.   

Ten reasons You MUST READ SECOND CHANCE:

1.       It’s a slow burn romance of the most delicious kind.

2.       Gray is HOT. He plays college baseball and the guitar and he’s smart. Blue eyes and black hair? Yummy.

3.       Dylan is a photographer/dreamer and is so inspiring. She is the exact opposite of Gray, yet, they fit perfectly together.

4.       Hot and heavy make out scenes (not to the E.L. James extreme, sorry,)

5.       This book is quotable. From page one.

6.       It currently costs $3.99 (same as a vanilla latte if you need a point of reference)

7.       It’s written in opposite POV’s

8.       You can read this book as a standalone (although it will make you want to read First Comes Love, to understand how Dylan and Gray met).

9.       A fun crew of supporting characters adds just the right amount of humor, sexual tension, and perspective.

10.   You’ll crave more.

 ~Katie

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