I loved the first book, but Renewing Forever fell flat for me.

I truly struggled to become invested in these characters and their storyline, and it ended up DNF.

I hope to try again sometime though, as maybe it was me.

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Sarah – ☆☆☆☆
This is a slow and angsty second chance romance. The author weaves memories of Frankie and Tommy’s childhood friendship between moments when Tom and Frank meet again in middle age. Nearing 50, the men’s lives look quite different. Frank has enjoyed a successful career while Tom stayed home to care for his mother and Frank’s uncle.

At times, this story moves painfully slow. In the first book, Frank was almost an affluent gay caricature. Back in his childhood home and face to face with his best friend, Frank feels more human, more solid, and more real. He is definitely more likeable. But he’s also private and communication isn’t a strength. Tom is equally inscrutable. He doesn’t communicate at all. And he doesn’t ask for help – even when his life is crumbling around him. I loved these guys, but I kept wanting to bang their heads together and get them to talk.

The childhood scenes are sweet and wonderful. The adult encounters start out hostile and awkward. The men have transformed as fully as the dilapidated resort that brings them back together. I have a massive weakness for property porn and Frank’s enormous historic lodge had me enthralled from the outset. I love the potential Frank and Tom see in the property and I love the way the property brings Frank and Tom together as partners.

The writing in this story is beautiful. There are a few passages that I had to underline and quotes that I needed to memorise. This is a slow and often difficult read, but it is beautifully written and the small bursts of hope woven through the pages kept me fully engaged in Frank and Tom’s story. I think this book will stand alone but readers will probably enjoy Frank more if they remember him from the first book.


Avid Reader – ☆☆☆☆
3.5 stars
M/M Romance
Triggers: Addiction, dementia in a parent.

Frankie and Tommy... I really wanted to love their story. I liked how we were given their story from the past and present. I think that it helped to understand their perspectives.

Frankie has lived a good life. He is successful but feels that something is missing. When he has to return home because of a death in his family, the last person he expects to see is Tommy. Frank has always wondered what happened all of those years ago. While he is known for being a playboy and living the good life, he never forgot Tommy.

Tommy, for all of his faults, has never forgotten Frankie. He knew when he was younger that he might never escape his family, but he didn't want to be the one who dragged Frank with him. Even with his belief that he was doing the right thing, he knew that Frank might never forgive him.

When these two find each other again, it isn't all hearts and love. They have to work through their history and what is stressing them now too. It's a real relationship that has real issues. I liked that it wasn't a fall back in to love right away. They took the time to relearn each other. So, while it wasn't my favorite story, it was well developed and delivered both angst and love.

Kelly Jensen continues her This Time Forever series about couples in their forties finding love and happiness with Renewing Forever, a beautifully written, reflective and somewhat wistful story about childhood friends whose lives went in very different directions, and who must work out if the forever they’d envisaged three decades earlier might now be possible.

We first met Franklin – Frank – Tarn in Building Forever, book one in the series, as the best friend of Simon Lynley, one of the principals in that story. Frank, a lifestyle journalist, came across as garrulous and flirtatious, a bit of a party animal who’s always up for a good time and is happy with his busy life and frequently itinerant lifestyle. In Renewing Forever, we see other sides to him as he starts to come to terms with the fact that he’s ready for his life to take a new direction and to finally put down some roots.

When Frank was a boy, he and his best friend, Tommy Benjamin (Benjamin and Franklin – heh) planned to travel the world together. Although they came from very different backgrounds – Frank’s family was well-off, and he grew up in a secure environment, with both parents, a doting uncle and siblings while Tommy’s mother was a single parent who struggled with addiction and often neglected him – the boys forged a strong bond of friendship which seems, as they approach manhood, to be turning into more. Tommy, however, can’t bear the idea of losing Frank as a friend, and tells him that’s what how he wants them to stay; no matter that there’s a definite attraction between them, neither of them is to do anything to change what they have. And that’s fine until one night, when they’re both seventeen, Frank kisses Tommy, and gets a punch in the face as a result. Frank leaves town after that, and doesn’t look back, returning as infrequently as possible.

He wouldn’t be going back there now were it not for the fact that his uncle Robert has recently died and left his business – The Bossen Hill Family Resort – in the Pocono Mountains to him and his sister in his will. Frank doesn’t want or need it, but has agreed to meet Annabelle there to decide what they’re going to do with the place.

Frank arrives – after a crappy journey – to find that the lodge is terribly run down. The smell of dampness lingers in the air, the furnishings are worn, the grounds are a mess… once a thriving business, it’s dilapidated and unkempt – and Frank is appalled to see the place in such a state. In another surprise, Frank also finds his old friend and first love Tommy Benjamin there; he hadn’t known that Tom had been helping Robert manage the resort for years… and wasn’t prepared for all the old feelings that seeing Tom again churns up inside him.

It’s clear from the start that both men still care for each other a great deal, but they’re at such different places in their lives that it’s sometimes difficult to see how they will ever be able to work things out and find a way to be together on terms that work for both of them. The social gulf that existed between them when they were younger is even more pronounced now; Frank is successful and comfortably-off, while Tom has never left his home town and his financial situation is now more precarious than ever. He’s a loving, caring man whose life has never been easy and who is doing the best he can for his sick mother, in spite of the way she treated him when he was younger. But she’s his mother – what else can he do but look after her? And Tom is also – naturally and realistically – very prickly about his situation, not wanting Frank to feel obligated or to see just how dispirited and simply dragged down by life he has become, and goes to some lengths in the attempt to conceal the truth – which, of course, is a recipe for disaster, especially when it causes Frank to doubt Tom’s reasons for getting close to him again.

Ms. Jensen develops the friendship between young Frankie and Tommy extremely well through a series of short flashbacks to various points in their lives, culminating in the kiss that sent Frank running. Readers get a strong sense of what these two meant to each other back then, and she does an equally good job of showing them working through the things that divide them; of Frank’s growing self-awareness that he’s not been as wise to Tom’s difficulties as he should have been, and Tom’s realisation that it’s not weakness to accept help from the man he loves. Their renewed relationship is well-developed and easy to buy into although I wasn’t completely convinced by the reasons given for their parting or by the fact that their teenaged love lasted for thirty years. Still, those are niggles rather than full-blown flaws in the storytelling.

Renewing Forever is a quiet story which is pervaded by an almost palpable sense of melancholy. Frank’s dissatisfaction with the direction his career and life is taking him, Tom’s struggles financially and personally, his mother’s decline into old age and infirmity – all are paralleled by the disrepair into which the lodge has fallen, and the struggles faced by Frank and Tom both personally and in terms of how they can possibly turn things around – if they even want to – feel real and are incredibly well written. This is a sad book in many ways, but it’s not all doom and gloom; the author builds this story of renewal – of place, home, lives and love – beautifully, giving readers small glimpses of victory like shafts of sunlight in a dark room as Frank and Tommy gradually realise that their visions of the future coalesce and that they want to make it a reality together.

Okay, sign me up for any and all additional novels in Kelly Jensen’s This Time Forever series, because this one, Renewing Forever, was even better than the first—and that is saying an awful lot considering I loved Building Forever. This is a deliciously sweet, slightly angsty romance at its best, in my opinion. With well-written characters who have depth and some emotional maturity—but a whole raft of insecurities—the novel gives us a fully fleshed out story that keeps one invested to the very end.

Told in alternating time periods, by hearkening back to the past and unfolding the present day, the book gives a friendship of two young boys from very different economic backgrounds who become best buddies. When Frankie pushes for more right before going off to college, Tommy reacts in fear—fear that any change, moving them to a distinct romantic edge, would ruin the friendship he has come to depend on so much. The two go their separate ways, with Tommy never communicating with Frankie after their falling out. They won’t meet again until some thirty years later, when Frankie’s uncle (Tommy’s employer and, essentially, his father figure as well) passes away, leaving the rundown resort, where Tommy has been living and working, to Frankie. Since they parted, Frankie has become a successful writer, doing various projects for popular magazines, and Tommy has pursued his photography, making a modest side-living from it. However, Tommy has also been caring for his ailing mother, and her facility care expenses have drained every financial resource he has or could earn.

When the two men meet again, there is a great deal of anger on Frankie’s part which simply masks the hurt he had when Tommy turned him away and spurned his overtures. For Tommy, he now has a chance to make things right, to hopefully heal the rift he caused between he and Frankie and see if they can try again. But Tommy still has difficulty trusting that he will ever be good enough for Frankie, and now that he is living near poverty level and is not nearly as successful as Frankie, the doubts Tommy has strengthens the wall he has built around his heart.

I wish I could go on and on about how amazing this novel was for me. Never did I want to both shake and hug a person like I did Tommy. Here he had the man he has loved for so long within his grasp, and fear keeps him from telling the guy the truth. This story was really beautiful. First, I love that Kelly Jensen has chosen to focus on older men in this series—they have both a maturity and a vulnerability that is not very often seen in characters their age. Secondly, I additionally enjoyed the idea that most of these men are having a second go at love and, in this case, hoping to overcome a past that left an indelible mark on them emotionally. But what really delights me about this novel is that the happiness often found at story’s end is one that is solid, real and lasting.

Tommy was a right mess, and yet one could understand his reluctance to allow Frankie to see how much he needed help. After so many years apart and knowing how successful Frankie had become, it was a no-brainer to get just how much of a loser Tommy viewed himself as. It was the struggle that both men went through that made this story so rich. Both had real feelings of inadequacy when it came to being enough for the other. I was swept up in their past and enjoyed seeing glimpses of how they grew together. It’s hard to describe why this story resonated with me; perhaps it’s the age of the men, which was so refreshing given we rarely see both being older MCs. Or, maybe it was the way in which Kelly Jensen never rushed but made time for the story arc to fully develop and thereby made the ending that much sweeter. I think, however, that it was the way in which Tommy grew to understand that relying on a person you love is not failing but rather cementing the idea of a forever-after with that person.

Renewing Forever is an emotionally satisfying novel that allows for love to be the victor over obstinate pride and past failures. With a slow-moving but engaging plotline, and characters that leaped off the page in terms of realism, this novel is a win from beginning to end.

Frank was Simon's steadfast, loyal, witty friend in Building Forever, the first book in Kelly Jensen's This Time Forever series. He was also a pro at playing the field, but for all the "fun" he seemed to be having, it was obvious that something was missing... or someone. Once he arrived in the Poconos, it wasn't hard to figure out what or who that something was.

I have to admit, I got a little agitated with both Frank and Tom at times throughout Renewing Forever. A lot of heartache could have been avoided if these two would have just talked, but as I told my girls when they were younger, teenage boys aren't known for their insight. It was obvious that these two were still crazy about each other, but even as adults, they had no idea how to "fix" things. Tom made a huge mistake when they were younger, but Frank wasn't blameless.

In the mean time, they had a property that they both loved that was falling to pieces around them. It kept them busy and was the perfect diversion from facing the feelings and memories they were trying to avoid. Sorting things out was inevitable though and I loved spending time with these two and watching them find each other again.

There was a lot more to love about Renewing Forever. I loved the trips into the past that the author shared that help readers get to know Frank and Tom even better. The supporting characters also added a lot to the story. Simon and Charlie made quite a few appearances - and then there was Brian. I knew from the beginning that he would eventually have his own story, but after he was introduced in Building Forever, I couldn't see how Simon's cheating ex could be redeemed. Well, stay tuned because I just finished reading Chasing Forever and even though I started warming up to Brian in Renewing Forever, I was totally unprepared for may feelings for him changing so drastically less than halfway through is story. <3

I gave Renewing Forever three stars, which really just meant that I liked the book but I did have some issues. I liked Frank and Tom together, and I thought it was great that they wanted to rebuild the resort that Frank’s Uncle left to him. However, these two former best friends hadn’t spoken in thirty years…and it was really obvious as to why Tom pushed Frank away, but the book almost made it seem like it was meant to be a surprise. I can’t say for sure, but it was definitely not a mystery to me. Also, I felt like they were both really stubborn and could have found their way back together years before.

However, in the present, I liked the two of them, even if Tom was still trying to push Frank away, and I was happy when they would make strides toward being together. This is actually the second book in a series, and I believe Frank is included in the first book, but I started with Renewing Forever and didn’t find anything confusing. I do, however, have the third book to hopefully read and review soon (and that stars a secondary character from Renewing Forever).

This second book in the The Time Forever series is just as good as the first, featuring Frank (best friend of Simon from the first book) and his boyhood best friend Tom. Once again, we have a recurring theme of second chances and protagonists not being what we initially thought - and the ability to look on things differently later in life than when young. I especially liked Tom's very conflicted character here and how complicated we can make things that are already problematic.

Story: 30 years after he left, it is the death of his beloved Uncle that brings him back to the resort built by his family and run by his uncle. It is there that he reunites with Tom - the childhood friend who drove him away when he tried to deepen their relationship. He thought he had left it all behind - living a cosmopolitan life of movie stars and travel as a famous journalist. But Tom brings it all back: that and the need to find a 'home' amidst all his wanderings.

Frank appeared to be a happy-go-lucky character in the first book - someone with a fond relationship with Simon but who enjoys the parties and travel. What we find with Frank in this book, however, is that he is hiding a broken heart from Tom when they were teens. Tom, meanwhile, is struggling to stay above water: the only child of a capricious and often drug/drink addled single mother, he has always known that the wealthy Frank was meant for better things than him. The heart of the book is Frank coming to understand why Tom chased him away - and Tom being honest with Frank about his true situation.

Because we have complicated characters with a lot of nuance, this made for a great read. As with all of Jensen's books, we have a characters with a good heart who are dealing with the complications of life. Because both protagonists are older, they are given a different perspective and the chance to fix what they could not when they were younger.

In all, a very enjoyable read and I am looking forward to book three. I always have such a warm and happy feeling after having finished Jenson's books. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

Kelly Jensen continues her This Time Forever series about couples in their forties finding love and happiness with Renewing Forever, a beautifully written, reflective and somewhat wistful story about childhood friends whose lives went in very different directions, and who must work out if the forever they’d envisaged three decades earlier might now be possible.

We first met Franklin – Frank – Tarn in Building Forever, book one in the series, as the best friend of Simon Lynley, one of the principals in that story.  Frank, a lifestyle journalist, came across as garrulous and flirtatious, a bit of a party animal who’s always up for a good time and is happy with his busy life and frequently itinerant lifestyle.  In Renewing Forever, we see other sides to him as he starts to come to terms with the fact that he’s ready for his life to take a new direction and to finally put down some roots.

When Frank was a boy, he and his best friend, Tommy Benjamin (Benjamin and Franklin – heh) planned to travel the world together.  Although they came from very different backgrounds – Frank’s family was well-off, and he grew up in a secure environment, with both parents, a doting uncle and siblings while Tommy’s mother was a single parent who struggled with addiction and often neglected him – the boys forged a strong bond of friendship which seems, as they approach manhood, to be turning into more.  Tommy, however, can’t bear the idea of losing Frank as a friend, and tells him that’s what how he wants them to stay; no matter that there’s a definite attraction between them, neither of them is to do anything to change what they have.  And that’s fine until one night, when they’re both seventeen, Frank kisses Tommy, and gets a punch in the face as a result.  Frank leaves town after that, and doesn’t look back, returning as infrequently as possible.

He wouldn’t be going back there now were it not for the fact that his uncle Robert has recently died and left his business – The Bossen Hill Family Resort – in the Pocono Mountains to him and his sister in his will.  Frank doesn’t want or need it, but has agreed to meet Annabelle there to decide what they’re going to do with the place.

Frank arrives – after a crappy journey – to find that the lodge is terribly run down.  The smell of dampness lingers in the air, the furnishings are worn, the grounds are a mess… once a thriving business, it’s dilapidated and unkempt - and Frank is appalled to see the place in such a state.  In another surprise, Frank also finds his old friend and first love Tommy Benjamin there; he hadn’t known that Tom had been helping Robert manage the resort for years… and wasn’t prepared for all the old feelings that seeing Tom again churns up inside him.

It’s clear from the start that both men still care for each other a great deal, but they’re at such different places in their lives that it’s sometimes difficult to see how they will ever be able to work things out and find a way to be together on terms that work for both of them.  The social gulf that existed between them when they were younger is even more pronounced now; Frank is successful and comfortably-off, while Tom has never left his home town and his financial situation is now more precarious than ever.  He’s a loving, caring man whose life has never been easy and who is doing the best he can for his sick mother, in spite of the way she treated him when he was younger.  But she’s his mother – what else can he do but look after her?  And Tom is also – naturally and realistically – very prickly about his situation, not wanting Frank to feel obligated or to see just how dispirited and simply dragged down by life he has become, and goes to some lengths in the attempt to conceal the truth – which, of course, is a recipe for disaster, especially when it causes Frank to doubt Tom’s reasons for getting close to him again.

Ms. Jensen develops the friendship between young Frankie and Tommy extremely well through a series of short flashbacks to various points in their lives, culminating in the kiss that sent Frank running.  Readers get a strong sense of what these two meant to each other back then, and she does an equally good job of showing them working through the things that divide them; of Frank’s growing self-awareness that he’s not been as wise to Tom’s difficulties as he should have been, and Tom’s realisation that it’s not weakness to accept help from the man he loves.  Their renewed relationship is well-developed and easy to buy into although I wasn’t completely convinced by the reasons given for their parting or by the fact that their teenaged love lasted for thirty years. Still, those are niggles rather than full-blown flaws in the storytelling.

Renewing Forever is a quiet story which is pervaded by an almost palpable sense of melancholy.  Frank’s dissatisfaction with the direction his career and life is taking him, Tom’s struggles financially and personally, his mother’s decline into old age and infirmity – all are paralleled by the disrepair into which the lodge has fallen, and the struggles faced by Frank and Tom both personally and in terms of how they can possibly turn things around – if they even want to – feel real and are incredibly well written.  This is a sad book in many ways, but it’s not all doom and gloom; the author builds this story of renewal – of place, home, lives and love – beautifully, giving readers small glimpses of victory like shafts of sunlight in a dark room as Frank and Tommy gradually realise that their visions of the future coalesce and that they want to make it a reality together.

Buy it at: Amazon/Apple Books/Barnes & Noble/Kobo
Visit our Amazon Storefront

Frank and Tom were childhood friends until one kissed the other, the other punched one in the face and they never met again for thirty years. When Frank needs to go back home because he's inherited his uncle's property, he finds out Tom is still there.

2.5.

I liked the idea of best friends in love with each other needing to figure how to work things out instead of the unrealistic love is enough. Both characters were nice and made me cheer for them. I also loved Tom's backstory and how he cares for his mother.

Still, this fell far from perfect.

I'm not so into sex scenes so I had even felt more interested when the reviews said there wasn't much. But the truth is not that it lacks sex scenes, it does have a good number actually, though it takes many attempts for them to go to the end. What happens is that there's too much angst, it was hard to believe they were over forty and not fifteen. I know there's a public for that, and I am all for taking time for the characters to get together, but I need better excuses. What really happened here was not the characters taking time but the rhythm going too slow.

I haven't read the other books in the series, but we get to meet some returning characters from those books (if you've ever started a series from halfway, you learn to recognize the cameos). They were all interesting enough and got me curious. I also loved Brian and hope he'll get his chance at a happy ending as well.

As you can see, the story is pleasing enough and the characters are lovely, if only the rhythm could have picked up... This was my first book by this author as far as I can remember, but I want to read more from her.



Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

I’m not necessarily a big fan of second-chance romances, but this one I liked.

This book is the second in Jensen’s This Time Forever series and centers around Frank, Simon’s friend from the earlier novel. Frank inherits his uncle’s resort in the Poconos, and when he goes to check it out, he finds that the only remaining employee is Tom, Frank’s former best friend. The two men haven’t spoken in thirty years, not since Frank kissed Tom the night before he left for college and Tom responded by punching him. Frank never understood why Tom lashed out, since he knew Tom was attracted to men. But with Tom in front of him, Frank realizes that ultimately the why of what happened might not matter, because he still loves his Tommy. And as for Tom, he regrets what he did, but he’s not sure there’s any way to move forward with Frank, even though Frankie has always come first in his heart.

Several things about this romance appealed to me. I liked the fact that both main characters were in their late 40s, but that their age doesn’t really become a focus of the book except as a reflection of how many years they’ve spent apart. It’s mostly a very quiet story, built out of small moments as the two men reconnect and realize how much they still love each other. I suppose that could bore some people, but for me it worked, with the emotional revelations both men experience becoming the highlight of the novel. And, yeah, maybe they’re both a couple of idiots for not trying to see each other sooner, and Tom particularly idiotic for driving Frank away in the first place. But people sometimes do stupid things when emotions (especially pride) are involved, and I thought Jensen did a good job outlining the feelings that motivated the two of them to do what they did despite the love that they felt for each other.

There’s a bit of business about a company that wants to buy the lodge and may be engaging in some dodgy activities that I wish had been left out of the story. It never goes anywhere and really didn’t seem that important to the plot. That’s just a minor quibble, though.

I’d recommend this novel for Jensen’s fans and readers who enjoy thoughtful second-chance romances. I’m looking forward to the third book in the series, which will be about Simon’s ex, Brian. I’m expecting it to be good, based on how much I liked the first two.

A copy of this book was provided through NetGalley for review; all opinions expressed are my own.

For me personally, Renewing Forever, the second installment in Kelly Jensen “This Time Forever” series is better than the first book.

First, it features both men approaching fifty years old – both Frank and Tom are 49 years old. Second, it has second-chance romance theme, since Frank and Tom hasn’t seen each other for three decades, after Frank left the town having his heart broken and rejected. Third, it is more quiet, more melancholy, which definitely right up my alley.

Also, the steam is low, it’s more about emotion and reconnecting for these two men, and gosh, I must admit that I read several chapters with glassy eyed, especially towards the end.

I don’t know if it’s because both men are almost half-of-a-century old, but I feel like their reunion is not very harsh. I mean, I love reading second-chance romance, and usually when someone is hurt in the past, the story will have the character filled with anger or resentment. Here, it feels like even if Frank wants to know the reason, he hasn’t stubbornly demand the answer from Tom.

I really enjoy reading the progress on how Frank and Tom becomes Frankie and Tommy again. Yes, the reason on why Tom pushes Frank away thirty years ago – and all the years after — sounds misguided, probably because he’s young and very prideful. I would love for someone to knock his sense out earlier.

I also feel rather sad knowing that they could have their happiness earlier. However, I still savor this second-chance between them. Maybe it does take thirty years for both men to be a little bit wiser; for Frank to acknowledge Tom’s fear more than his hurt, and for Tom to admit he needs help.

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Frankie and Tommy once dreamed of traveling the world together. But when seventeen-year-old Frank kissed Tom, their plans ended with a punch to the jaw and Frank leaving town without looking back. Thirty years later, Frank’s successful career as a journalist is interrupted by his uncle’s death and the question of his inheritance—the family resort where his childhood dreams were built. When he returns to the Pocono Mountains, however, he finds a dilapidated lodge and Tommy, the boy he never forgot.

Tom’s been keeping the resort together with spit and glue while caring for Frank’s uncle, Robert—a man he considered father, mentor, and friend—and his aged mother, who he refuses to leave behind. Now Robert is gone, taking Tom’s job with him. And Frank is on the doorstep, wanting to know why Tom is still there and why the old lodge is falling apart.

But before they can rebuild the resort, they’ll have to rebuild their friendship. Only then can they renew the forever they planned all those years ago

Kelly Jensen has another warmhearted winner of a contemporary romance in Renewing Forever, the second in her This Time Forever series.  This time, instead of a decades old one family home,  Jensen looks to frame her story around a family resort high in the Pocono Mountains that has seen better days and the men whose lives were and are grounded in its foundations and woods.

I've always felt that houses, especially older ones, have a life of their own, one made over years of habitation, wear, care, and the impressions of the people who have pressed their personalities and lives upon their structures, until they almost give off a feeling of their own when you enter them.  Fanciful notions?  Maybe.  But Kelly Jensen's resort has the power to pull one man back and to keep one man safely  tied to the dreams it represents, past, present, and future.    And with her vivid descriptions and ability to create painful scenes of a  resort on the edge of heartbreaking neglect and foreclosure, she contrasts that with memories of a place brimming over with promise, joy, and, love.

In many ways, this is a novel that has layers of time,  past, present, and a flickering hope of the future that shrouded by a mystery.  What happened all those years ago that divided these men?  As the story climbs towards the answer, we get flashbacks to the their past, and each boys background and history.  Then we move forward to the present as they awkwardly deal with the fact that Frank now owns the resort that Tom has been living in and keeping together for all these years.

The men, their relationship, their friends, the dynamics between them all are all rendered realistically.  It's complicated, as they say because of old romances and misec up feelings have a   way of playing havoc when trying to sort out a truth. Kelly Jensen gets that muddy nature of life, especially at a older age with more emotional baggage to haul around.

There's plenty of angst, hurt/comfort here, the serious nature of homelessness to deal with, and issues of trust.  Not exactly a lighthearted romance but the depth of the issues is mirrored by the depth of the characterizations and setting.  It's a conglomeration of narrative wonder.

I thought that ending was just about right for these two men, such a beautiful way to go into the future.

This Time Forever series has given us a remarkable home, a memorable resort, and what?  What is next in this series?  I can't wait to  find out.

I highly recommend this story, this series, and yes, this author.  They are all amazing.

Sequel to Jensen's Building Forever, this title is a second-chance romance. It's night as tightly composed as the first title in the series and suffers from an overuse of flashbacks, but the characters are pleasant and it's nice to see older protagonists. Conflict is resolved a bit too quickly, and the title feels somewhat rushed as a result.

They couldn't undo the last thirty years. Time had marched on, folding over the hurt and turning it into scars. They couldn't change it. Best thing to do would be to let it go.

But letting go of thirty years of pent-up anger, fears, and frustration is really not that easy, as Frank and Tom discover. They used to be best friends, determined never to give in to the simmering sexual tension between them, and when Frank finally does kiss him, he gets a broken nose in return, and loses the most important person in his life. Thirty years later, they meet again after Frank's uncle dies and leaves him a dilapidated resort that Tom has managed for the last couple of years. The spark is still there between them, but both are reluctant to trust again after everything.

Second-chance romances are my absolute favorite kind when well done (as this was), and I could really relate to Frank! I teared up when he finally let go of all his pent-up frustration and lets it all out. It felt like a truly cleansing moment, and I loved how their relationship developed after that. It didn't feel forced or unnatural, and I loved it. And I liked these two idiots together. Sure, thirty years is a long separation (at least they had good, believable reasons), but I still felt like they actually worked through their problems, and I was convinced they'd make it in the end. I also really liked that they are both in their late forties and more settled and mature by the time they finally reconnect.

One tiny little complaint though. Yes, I realize that re-inventing their resort is symbolic and a huge endeavor, but honestly? Towards the end, I just wanted things to move on already so they could get to their happily ever after. It felt a bit dragging towards the end for me.

I really liked this author's writing, and I will definitely check out the other books in this series.

3.5 stars! Recommended for everyone who likes a character-driven second-chance romance :)

Hmm, I think I liked book one better?

This book follows Frank Tern, who was first introduced in <u>Rebuilding Forever</u> as Simon’s best friend, and Tom Franklin, Frank’s friend from childhood who cares for the lodge in the Poconos his uncle ran. Frank went on to be a journalist and traveled much of the world while Tom remained in the Poconos. <u>Renewing Forever</u> is very much a second chance romance as 30 years previously Tom gave Frank a broken nose when they first kissed and they fell out of contact until the death of Frank’s uncle brings him back to Bossen Hill.

I enjoyed the second chance aspect of the romance and flashbacks between their first meeting and other important moments in their past, interspersed with present day presentations of who they both grew up to be. Tom is a heartbreaking character who has a lot of bad luck and tragic history, between a mother with a history of addiction and accidents, and being homeless in order to pay her bills. Frank is almost naive at times and prefers fluff, sometimes having his privilege displayed in ways that leave Tom feeling not good enough, almost.

I did enjoy this book, and curious about Brian’s book next, but something about this story wasn’t as emotional or fulfilling as the first one was for me. I like how Tom and Frank finally start talking to each other and clear the 30 years worth of past pain between them, but hate how much Tom suffered in all that time.

Childhood best friends meet three decades later, realizing they both made mistakes, but sheer stubbornness and an unwillingness to reach out has kept them apart. They lived a life, interrupted.

This story carries a sense of nostalgia and regret. Frank arrives during a deluge, soaked to the bone and filled with dread. He is shocked to see the state of his uncle’s lodge and even more startled to run into Tom, still living the same life Frank left behind.

Melancholy permeates the men’s initial interactions. Frank does everything he can to keep Tom at arm’s length.

Ultimately, this isn’t a sad story. It is a second-chance romance after all. Frank and Tom are pushing 40 and have already wasted so much time. The steam is subdued, but the ending is peaceful and fulfilling. Tom and Frank rehabilitate their relationship much like they do the lodge.

The writing is lyrical, poetic almost, but I felt like it served to keep the reader at a distance. I never became fully connected with the MCs or their quiet romance. Parts of the story seemed inordinately long, and I was relieved when it ended.

3.5* Book two of the trilogy, featuring the always-pushing-it-BFF from book 1, Frank.

This book can be read as a standalone, but I think that if you read book 1 first, you won't be thrown by the mention of events and people that pop up in this tale, such as Brian (lead of book 3), Simon and Charlie (book 1) and Livvie, Charlie's daughter who has her baby during this book.

It's a low-key, low drama book and it's very well written. I think I may well be ageist about this series, as I am a couple of years older than the leads and no, I'm not made of money and have just lived a very ordinary, RL life, and yet mine seems not to be as empty as these guys'. I could sort of understand why Tom's was, but at the same time, I would have expected someone of his age who owned 2 properties to have more financial sense, and as for Frank, I'd have expected a little more introspection, a little more questioning why his life was so empty of things other than material. But, that's me being judgemental, sorry, and I think these are perhaps the reasons that the tale ended up being so plausible.

I think the tale worked as though the leads had been friends heading to something a little more than friends, some 30 years before, there hadn't been any major falling out or drama and the circumstances of the tale drew them back into each other's paths and lives. I liked how they took their time to relearn each other and how they seemed to quickly fall into comfort with each other, but I also felt that the two elements included to provide some drama - a realtor and a nosy cop - were just filler. The former should/could perhaps have been more relevant and more instrumental to reuniting the leads, but she was just 'on paper' and didn't come across as a real person or the disruption that she in theory was meant to be. Sorry if that sounds confusing, but I think I mean that she was a little there, but not there.

I did feel, though, that we saw a very, very different Frank here to how he was portrayed in book 1. That's not at all a complaint, as I think here we saw the real guy, with real feelings and loneliness that he perhaps hadn't realised he suffered from, rather than the other guy who was always in the thick of it, always in demand, travelling and making demands. I liked this version better, especially as I had been clueless as to the possibility of him getting a book of his own, and I only clocked who Frank was when Simon and Charlie got mentioned and I realised that things were starting to sound familiar.

The tale ends a full year on from the guys' reunion, with no miracles having been worked, but with things done realistically and plausibly. I liked how the tale ended, with something that clearly meant a lot to both guys, and I have a feeling that we'll see the conclusion of their love affair in the next book in the series, which of course, has Brian (The Bad, or maybe not so bad?) as one of the leads.

ARC courtesy of Riptide Publishing and NetGalley for my reading pleasure.