Review : Second Chance at the Orchard Inn

Second Chance at the Orchard Inn by Heather McGovern

Orchard Inn #2

Genre: Contemporary, Romance, 

Goodreads: Click

Pages: 480

Published: June 6, 2023

A charming second-chance romance about a big city chef whose return home to help run her family's wedding planning business means reuniting with the man who broke her heart.

Chef Aurora Shipley spent years slicing, dicing, and chopping her way up the ladder of L.A.'s competitive restaurant scene, but when her sisters needed her help, she dropped everything to return home to Texas. With her family’s Orchard Inn now on its feet, it's time for Aurora to head back to the big city. At least there, she won’t keep running into ex-boyfriend Jude Jones or her high school bully Erica, who now needs Aurora and her wedding planning business to throw the celebration of her dreams. Will Aurora let the past go long enough to send the bride off without a hitch and ignore her traitorous heart urging her to stay and try again with Jude?

As a teenager, Jude Jones foolishly listened to his father and let Aurora Shipley slip away. In the intervening years, the sweet, shy girl grew into a stunning, capable, confident woman, and her reappearance is messing with Jude's focus, which should be on expanding Jones' Family Herbs. He broke Aurora's heart once, and she broke his, too. This time will Jude be strong enough to fight for her—for them—and a future together?

Aurora is a chef making a name for herself in the LA scene but at home for a short while to help her sisters wedding business. Unfortunately that means running into her childhood sweetheart Jude who broke her heart so she left to pursue her culinary career. Jude wants more out of his family business and helping to expand maybe having a restaurant Farm to Table situation and could use a little advice from Aurora. Both being near each other again sparks old feeling but also is a reminder of past heartbreak that both of them will need to work through.

So Jude and Aurora are both going through the things when it comes to their career and getting further than where they were at. They wanted more and it was interesting seeing the conflict of family and romance and work figuring how how to get to where they want to be and I really enjoyed seeing that process. There's also a pie baking contest going on and  small town things of old bullies come to play. I really love seeing both of their families and how supportive they were for each other and it was interesting seeing how they really were a great shoulder to lean on when things were getting tough and how they bounced ideas between each other to help eachother. Overall I really enjoyed this book.