LOVE, REKINDLED: A SECOND-CHANCE ROMANCE COLLECTION

4 stars

Love, Rekindled: A Second-Chance Romance Collection by the 1001 Dark Nights is out now—and it's worth a read.

In this romance novella collection are five different stories from some of the best authors in the game, all dealing with one of my absolute FAVORITE tropes: second-chance romance. Most of them are with characters familiar to those authors' readers from their established worlds and etc., which is extra fun if you're interested in either revisiting your author's favorite worlds OR you'd like to try your hand at a new-to-you author.

(I know that stuff above is very market-y, but truly I think collections like this are a great soft sell for authors to meet new readers—it's how I get introduced to new series, because a novella is a lot less stakes than an entire novel!)

In this collection:

Slayed by Darkness by Alexandra Ivy
Evermore by Corinne Michaels
The Close-up by Kennedy Ryan
Rafe by Sawyer Bennett
Rough Rhythm by Tessa Bailey

I requested Love, Rekindled because I am a huge fan of both Kennedy Ryan and Tessa Bailey. So let's be real, most of my thoughts here are for those two novellas in particular because I DID run right to their stories first (listen, we all do it!).

Kennedy Ryan's second-chance romance with Takira and Naz had my heart, y'all, with its sweet high-school flame start and its steamy adult ending. These characters exist in a cross-section of Ryan's basketball players universe and her Reel universe, so I loved all of the references and to see these characters get their sweet happy ending.

Tessa Bailey's romance was, like all Bailey stories, SMOKIN' hot. I honestly don't want to talk about this one too much because I had the best time going into it blind, but here's a little teaser quote to get you interested... "If another man called you his plaything, Lita, I would gut him." (Tell me you don't want to read that!!)

As someone who hasn't read any of Alexandra Ivy, Corinne Michaels, or Sawyer Bennett before—and all of their worlds were new to me—I'll confess that I enjoyed them but don't have too much to say specifically about their individual stories. I did get intrigued though by their worlds, so those three authors have joined my growing TBR pile to try out their series soon!

Thank you so much to the publisher for my copy in exchange for an honest review.