Didi and Shay fell in love during a trip to Venice. Upon returning home, they became inseparable and deeply in love. However, an act of betrayal resulted in Shay leaving town and leaving Didi heartbroken. Years later, Shay returns to their town to take care of his ailing father. Didi is now engaged and yet still has strong feelings for Shay. The course of true love rarely runs smoothly and theirs is no exception. Along the way, a cast of characters are also looking for love often in the wrong places. Will love prevail? This is a fun, easy delightful read with a beautiful setting in the Cotswold area of England. The people are realistic and fun and the story line believable.

I loved this book! It was heartwarming and strong. It was exactly what I needed with everything going on in the world! A happy little escape!

I liked this book. It had a lot of characters to keep track of but it was a good read. This is one of my favorite authors.

Just what was needed to lift the spirits. A nice easy romantic storyline and lovely characters.
Love Jill mansell books they are wonderful and funny and warm and this book was perfect.

Venice in the snow. Swoooooooon.
Age 18: Didi meets Shay on a group trip to Venice and that sparkle of first love swirls around like snowflakes. But, six months in, Shay takes off and no one knows where he went. Fast forward thirteen years, Shay is back and looking good (of course). And this is when we board the seesaw that is the summer and into the winter, right when Didi was supposed to marry someone else. And Now You're Back has lots of characters all hailing from Elliscombe, a town in the Cotswolds. They are quite a cast and there are lots of overlapping storylines that are a bit Love Actually in a town you'd want to visit for a weekend. This is a book about the sweetness of love at any age. It is a book about love that is patient and kind, but not in a biblical way, but rather in a tender way that gives off a warm glow. You'll get small-town feels and warmth. Don't expect over-the-top romance, but look for the love.

This is Jill Mansell's best book yet!!!! Absolutely feel in love with the characters and the situations they were in. There are many layers to this story, I was cheering for the underdog in this book, one can not but help do this. I feel this book will be the number one summer read this year. I can not wait to recommend this to friends and anyone looking for something new to read.

I thought this book was going to be a little too romancy for me, but I really ended up enjoying the story. It was fun and took the right amount of time for things to come around

I absolutely loved this book i read it in a day it was lovely it has a great story and i cannot recommend it highly enough

2.5 stars
I love second chance romance books, but I could not get into this.
The characters did not entice me, which is important in a romance novel.
It started off super cute, and then it went downhill and I couldn’t finish it. I skimmed to see if it got any better, and unfortunately, it did not.
It is very lighthearted and definitely meant for folks who like their romance to be more G rated and less steamy.

Overall rating: ★★★

Didi and Shay meet on a magical trip to Venice, where they end up building a snowman together and falling madly in love. Sadly, their relationship ends abruptly when something happens that changes everything. This event causes Shay to leave town and disappear. Didi has long since moved on, and is currently happily engaged to be married. But much to the town's surprise, Shay is back after thirteen years to fulfill his father's dying wish. He moves into the best suite of Didi's hotel, making them unexpected neighbours. Will him moving back change everything? Will secrets be revealed and will old feelings resurface?

"He'd been her first love and she'd been his."

It might be a weird thing to say, but I was more invested in the side characters' happiness than Didi and Shay's, because I felt like their story was a bit predictable. I found myself gravitating more towards Layla, Will, Rosa, Red and Benny. It was a joy reading their story and finding out their pasts and I found myself rooting for all of them more than for the "main couple".

Character personality wise, I can't say that I was impressed with any of them. They all maybe could've used a little more depth to them, but especially Didi and Shay. I also wish we'd gotten more Didi-Shay flashbacks, because I feel like that would've helped me to be more invested in their story.

“What was going through his mind right now...and was she completely crazy to be asking herself that question, given what was going on in hers?”

This was the first book I've read this year and seeing as it starts off with building a snowman in the middle of Venice, it was the perfect book to read in January. This book has a kind of Hallmark movie vibe to it, so if that's not your thing this might not be the book for you. I enjoyed reading it, though. It was a cute, fun, feel-good story about, well... love, mostly.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Sourcebooks Landmark for granting my wish and giving me an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

“Sometimes you just couldn't wait a single second more
for the other person to make the first move."

I really enjoyed And Now You’re Back! The characters were fun to read about and likable as well. It was a cute second chance book. The secondary characters in this book almost overtook the main two, but they didn’t. And they were a great addition to the storyline

Overall this is a quick, fun read. If you’re just looking for a book to make you smile about life, this may be it!

AND NOW YOU'RE BACK is a charming small-town romance with a little love for everyone: second-chance, later-in-life, friends-to-lovers, and moving portraits of familial and friend-love, too. The close third-person narration shifts among a handful of primary players: Didi, whose break-up from first love Shay thirteen years ago acts as a central mystery around which several other story lines revolve; Shay, who's back in town after a long absence -- even more handsome and, at last, filthy rich; Red, Shay's father, who is dying of cancer; Layla, Didi and Shay's longtime friend; and Rosa, Layla's widowed mother; and Benny, the man who currently lives in the house Rosa and Layla were forced to vacate after Joe's death. Other personalities from the town loom large -- this is a place where everyone knows everyone (and everyone's business) -- but the emotional force driving the plot forward comes from this core cast.

This is a sweet novel, if one overly reliant on nostalgia. The restrained intimacy between various couples feels almost stereotypically British; if any one of the core cast members was less polite, the book would have been much shorter. Despite the obviousness of destiny -- we know certain couples will end up together from the get-go -- Mansell goes through perhaps extraneous motions to make us question this. Ultimately, a good read for fans of Mhairi Macfarlane and Jackie Fraser's THE BOOKSHOP OF SECOND CHANCES.

Fans of Jill Mansell will like this quick, light-hearted read with various romantic entanglements. The main characters were not as interesting as some of the secondary and older ones, such as Layla/Will and Rosa/Benny and Red. No deep thinking required here.

I received an advance copy of, And Now You're Back, by Jill Mansell. I have read a lot of other books by this author and loved them, but not this book. I did not like the language, characters, or the story.

Kind of reminded me of the movie, "Love Actually". A lot of intermingled storylines all converging around love with a bit of a mystery as to what happened 13 years previously. Very enjoyable "surface" read. The characters and stories, as I said, are many and varied so there is a level of depth that is lacking, which is fine. Sometimes that is just what you are looking for. I enjoyed this, especially the cast of characters and would read more from Mansell again.

With romance novels, the dance partners for the happy ending tend to reveal themselves rather early into the book, so essential ingredients for reading bliss are the writing itself and the depth of both the story and its main protagonists.
I loved the story, the winding journey of it, the apropos and the extra bit of care for the extras on set.
I hope the editing takes care of a sense of hurry that made itself felt over the last 10% of the book when genius spin-off events didn't get their full fifteen pages of fame.
Overall, a joy to read!

What I love about Jill Mansell!s books is the lives of the support characters that weave through the story. Didi and Shay are the main characters who fell in love in Venice many years previously but something happened that ripped them apart and made Shay move away.

We pick up the story again when Shay’s father becomes ill and Shay returns to the Cotswolds village.

I really enjoyed this book and couldn’t put it down. It is worthy of more than five stars

I am a big fan of Jill Mansell, having read all of her previous novels. And I am pleased to say this one was just as good as all her other ones. Yes the plot is a bit predictable, but that’s true of all books in this genre. It has characters you really care about, especially Red. If you’re a fan of this genre, you don’t want to miss this one!

Cute & British, but as flat as a tortilla chip.

I'm not about negative reviews. That's just not my personality. But I am about constructive reviews and honestly letting my friends know if I believe a book is worth it or not. In my opinion, this one was a bit of a letdown.

If you're into modern, swift reads set in England with minimal commitment, multiple love stories, PG rating, and Hallmark movie vibes (no judgment here, folks - you like what you like): this book is for you.

If you like flushed out reads with three-dimensional protagonists, and emotionally meaningful love stories w/ a dash of smut and spice: this book is not for you.

I wanted to like it. I really did. And to me, the real stars of this story weren't our main characters, but Layla and Will. They were a little flat, but truly adorable. I wasn't a fan of the writing style either and felt that Shay had about as much personality as a potato. It would have been nice to have more backstory with Didi and Shay. Maybe more flashbacks here and there of the good times in their relationship? I don't know. This one just didn't do it for me!

Big thank you Sourcebooks Landmark for sending me an ARC copy of this book!

Rekindling old flames, sweet second chance love stories are one of my favorites romance themes after enemies to lovers which always comes at the first place!

The beginning of the book was truly a fairy tale, magical, extra sweet-swoon-soft kind of adorable! Two 18 years old teenagers in Venice, it’s cold, snowing.

They’re building a snowman , sharing a bottle of Prosecco, getting know each other, getting so close to share an intimate kiss: yes, we’re introduced to our MCs: Didi and Shane at the first chapter but then we move forward: 13 years later, Didi works at her family hotel in Cotswolds, getting engaged for the third time, bumping into her first love Shane who stays at the most expensive hotel suit: the same boy whose father was in prison, suffering from poverty, working at several jobs to keep roof over his head at his young age becomes a tech millionaire.

We find out he also worked at Didi’s family’s hotel and because of an incident who ruined his reputation, he left the town and he didn’t come back till he is forced to fulfill his dad’s dying wish!

Now both Didi and Shane have to face the problems from their pasts and find the truth about the incident which forced Shane move away and broke Didi’s heart!

I loved both of the characters a lot and I truly wished their HEA but Didi was already engaged with Aaron and after the love triangle problem seemed to be solved when she broke up, Shane found an adorable actress to date which pissed me off a little!

I waited too long for both parties to come to their senses! Just because of extra unnecessary angsty, heartbreaking, long chapters, I cut some points and I gave three still I truly enjoyed this book but I wish it could be less angsty more romantic stars. ( by the way I also enjoyed the side stories of residents of Elliscombe but I think I wanted to concentrate on Didi and Shane’s second chance love story)

I love Jill Mansell’s sweet, heartfelt romcoms and I’m looking forward to read more of her works in near future.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.