A Fresh Start

Author(s): Rose McKittrick

Location(s): Nottingham, Chicago, Raleigh

Genre(s): Romance

Era(s): Contemporary

Eight months after Adam King moved in next door and turned Cariad Baker’s carefully contained life upside down, things are going suspiciously well.

Their two households have half-merged into one chaotic blended family: teenagers in love, a small boy worshipping Adam, an anxious rescue dog with behavioural issues, and an ever-growing list of reasons why living in separate houses is starting to look ridiculous. Adam wants a proper home together. Cari wants to believe she can have that without disappearing into someone else’s life again.

Then Adam suggests a summer trip to America.

For Adam, Raleigh is more than an old address. It is the city where he was young, famous, fearless and adored: the place that made him a Stanley Cup-winning goalie, and the place that still knows a version of him Cari has only ever glimpsed. For Cari, stepping into that world means facing the uncomfortable truth that the man she loves had an entire life before her. A bigger one. A louder one. One that may still be calling him.

As Adam is drawn back into the glamour, pressure and possibility of his old hockey world, Cari’s own unexpected success as a romance novelist starts dragging her out of hiding. Home, work, money, marriage, children, ambition: suddenly, every part of their future is up for negotiation.

Adam has spent years trying to become the sort of man who stays. Cari has spent years learning how to survive without needing – or being needed by – anyone too much. Building a life together may ask far more of them than either expected.

A Fresh Start is a funny, tender and sharply observed romance about blended families, second chances, midlife ambition, and discovering that new beginnings are rarely clean, simple or conveniently located in the same postcode.

Review this Book