I will never be able to say enough about this book — and I’m going to keep trying to find the words. Amazing. Beautiful. Lovely. A must read.

Liz is an awkward, anxious introvert who desperately wants to be seen meanwhile her husband Tobin is a charming, gregarious center-of-attention type. This story is about their marriage falling apart and coming back together through the power of improv comedy.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spice?: Closed door

Through the first 25% of the book, I wasn’t sure I was going to love it. Liz as a character didn’t hook me quite enough. Also as a married person, it can be difficult to read books about failing marriages. But also I love that there are books about married people finding their way back to each other. That’s what marriage is after all:
waking up everyday and choosing that person again. As they kept making attempts to reconnect through improv scenes, the story wound around my heart more and more. I can’t remember the last time I dreamily or painfully sighed out loud while reading a book.

The writing in this book is sarcastic AF and it was an absolute joy to read. I read a lot of books that label themselves a romcom but the dripping sarcasm in this one was my flavor of humor.

“I should start calling him David instead of Dick Head. I’ll concentrate on his redeeming qualities. All humans have some of those, I feel sure.”

“Good luck. Die well.”

You’ll like this if you enjoyed Before We Were Strangers or All Your Perfects. Although the writing here is better than both of those.

Thank you to NetGalley for this advanced reader copy!

WOW! I loved how fresh this book was. There aren't a lot of romance stories about a married couple who are struggling and I thought this was SO great. It was sweet and sexy. A must read for sure.

Rules for Second Chances is a tender, touching story of a woman who's trying to find herself in her career, her marriage, and her own life. She uses improv to rescue her relationship with her husband and win a pitch competition at work and discover herself asking the way. I thought it was beautifully written and it had a lot to teach me about being a good scene partner in life and love.

This one was just okay for me. I feel like we've been getting so many books from authors lately that kind of have an "Inside Baseball" look at whatever topic and it just feels like an instructional book at parts rather than the characters just experiencing something. And the marriage counseling and improv felt that way to me. It was such a slog at some points and at others it was an "oh my god just cut your losses and leave, please."

I thought, in general, it was well written and at times I could feel the chemistry and love. But it just wasn't all cohesive. I wanted more and also less, which... welcome to my brain.

I can tell the skill and ideas are there, just hoping it's better executed on North's next book.

*Thank you to the NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Sweet and surprisingly deep. I read this in one sitting and was rooting hard for the happily ever after the entire time. A beautiful story that I am sure many will enjoy! 5/5

Wow! A heretofore unheard of combination of improv, backcountry adventures, neurodivergence and a very sweet and heartfelt romance between two semi-estranged spouses. Just heart-meltingly lovely and also funny and wise. A perfect book for grownups!

Liz and Tobin's marriage is on the rocks. Using a self-help book and a group of people in an improv class, the two might just make it work.

I loved that the main character was presented as on the spectrum and in my experience with people with AU, I think the author did a good job. The marriage of family dynamics, marriage problems, and job stress all culminate into one of the most realistic novels I've read this year. My one issue with the book was that in parts it dragged. I tried to think about what could be taken away, but, you need all parts to make the story make sense.

Overall. it was a good read, just not one of my top pics for 2024.

This marriage in crisis romance is a heartfelt “yes, and”!

Chronically undervalued and underestimated Liv is trying to win the pitch contest at her work, a wilderness tourism company, and earn a promotion but in order to be taken seriously she must take improv classes recommended by the boss. As if that’s not enough, her marriage is struggling and she decides to separate from Tobin, her golden boy husband, until they work things out

When Tobin hears she needs an improv partner to practice with between classes he suggests they follow the teachings of an improv relationship book that their friend and her improv teacher happened to write.

To be honest, North did such a good job setting up why the marriage wasn’t working and it was in crisis, I wasn’t sure who the love interest was at first. It took me a while to warm up to Tobin since we weren’t in his head and but ultimately a very satisfying arc and ending!

This is my first book by Maggie North and I'm grateful to NetGalley for approving my request! Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this ARC!

Overall I enjoyed this book and it gets 3.5/5 stars for me! I found Liz and Tobin's relationship so cute and felt that the niche idea of using improv to re-kindle their relationship was an interesting and enjoyable idea! I appreciated Liz's strive to find herself and her independence, so that she could truly learn to love herself again and then in turn improve her relationships with others. I thought that the "practicing" scenes were so fun, although a few of them were maybe a little too outlandish in reality, but maybe that's improv! I liked that I learned a little bit more about what actually went into improv (as I have to be honest, I did not know much) and am even more impressed now with the quick thinking skill it requires. A few things that bothered me were that I truly TRULY disliked Amber and how she treated Liz. Maybe she's supposed to be disliked, but everything she said or did to Liz irked me. I think that the writing style for this book was different that what I'm used to, which is part of the reason for my rating. I wish that we had Tobin's POV, but I can understand how that would have disrupted our full view of Liz's journey in the end.

“I wish you could see yourself the way I see you. Nothing about you needs changing, as far as I’m concerned.”

I love a good second chance romance and I thought Maggie North executed this trope beautifully. Seeing how Liz and Tobin grew as individuals to better themselves and their marriage was inspiring. I could totally relate to Liz’s introverted personality, her social awkwardness, and feeling like she needed to get her own magic. I also really appreciated the neurodiversity representation. There were moments during the improv scenes where I felt a little lost, but overall I really enjoyed this debut novel.

“Love is about making your own rules, and so is life.”

Rules for Second Chances by Maggie North, I gave 3 stars. It's overall a nice story about facing your fears & working towards more self-confidence in both yourself as well as your interpersonal relationships, but 80% of the story is inside the head of the female lead Liz. Liz is a self-proclaimed millennial & all the recent books I've read (including this one) about the challenges that millennials face are very much a pity party. The characters come across as whiney & they overthink everything, so halfway through the book, you wanna tell Liz, "Pull up your big girl panties & just do this!"
Rules for Second Chances has a good storyline, but dragged on a bit more than what it could have been to still be an excellently written story.
Thank you, #NetGalley, for the ARC.

Liz and Tobin have been coasting while everyone else seems like they know what they're doing (hint: they don't, except the guy who wrote the book on it). Contemporary romance novels don't really focus a lot of married couples as main characters and these characters don't really have me rooting for them. There is something inherently unromantic about seeing two people mess up something that was probably good at one time. Liz and Tobin didn't really give me much to be excited about. Generally, you get some form of miscommunication as the problem, but here Liz is just another woman who makes herself small. Tobin is a husband who has absolutely no idea things were bad. There were parts that were enjoyable, where the truths of love between two people were never being actually broken, but sometimes it read a little too disjointed in its timeline and push explaining improv to get me super excited about how it would turn out. However, I would be excited to read a novel about Dr. Huge.

I love a second chance romance. I truly do, but it took a really long time for me to "get into" this one and to feel connected to any of the characters. I will say, I pushed through and I am glad that I did, it was an enjoyable read and watching these characters grow and reconnect was something truly magical.

This one was difficult to get through. The MC was hard to connect with and I found, though it started strong, the plot fizzled for me very quickly. This is the second book in a row I’ve read that had a subplot of improv out of nowhere and I’m realizing that it just doesn’t work for me. Leave improv for a different format!

Remember, just because it wasn’t for me doesn’t meant it won’t be for you!

Liz’s development throughout the story was so well done, and I loved watching her character grow. With her own growth, the romance between Liz and Tobin grew as well. With some beautifully written sentences, and a roller coaster of emotions, this debut was wonderful.

Wonderful second chance romance. The hypothetical cherry on top is them being divorced. Sometimes, you just need something more mature in the book world of 19-year-old heroines in fantasy novels and all the high school drama. Perfectly flawed, as we are. Definitely pick it up as a palette cleanser for other genres!

I enjoyed the book and the writing, but unfortunately the main characters themselves were not ones I am usually drawn to! I think the plot was interesting and I loved the back story that was built.

I'm a sucker for second-chance, marriage-in-crisis books, but I'm sad to say that this book didn't do it for me. Maybe this is a personal thing for me, but I hate that it's the threat of divorce that finally spurs the MMC into action. The scenarios were fun (especially the ferry one!), but the writing sort of took me out of the book sometimes. I think my largest issue was with the disconnect between the way Liz and Tobin were talked about vs what their characters actually did. Liz is frustratingly woe-is-me the entire book, but doesn't really seem like she wants to change that or understand why she's the way she is. She keeps talking about Tobin being this everyman's person while also being kind but he doesn't come off that way at all (kind of one-dimensional, honestly). I think the conflict was, honestly, not high-stakes enough (don't even get me started on the pitch competition), and the miscommunication trope was not executed well in that the whole setup for why they have to be partners seemed pretty contrived (which, I guess understandable for a fictional book, but come on!).
Thank you Netgalley and SMP for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I am having such mixed feelings about this one so I’m going to start with what worked for me before I state my issues. I really liked the way we were taken right into a marriage on the verge of complete failure, watching it crumble immediately before our eyes. We felt the urgency from the get-go and the tension that was keeping this marriage in a really uncomfortable place. Another reviewer said they felt their conflict was silly, but I completely understood it as someone who has had messy relationships go south because of all the little things, not just some big momentous event causing chaos. Sometimes all you need is to lose communication and faith in each other and everything else can come down with it.
The premise of this book is like nothing else I’ve ever read, with Liz and Tobin working through their marital problems using an improv self-help relationship therapy book as their guide? What on Earth? But somehow I let my judgment lay low and got into it. It was so awkward but it was so fun watching Liz come out of her shell and find her voice through her improv class and the self-help book. Because this is only from Liz’s PoV, we have to judge Tobin’s love and angst through what she’s seeing, so at times it was hard to really know what he was feeling, over their physical chemistry. I loved watching Liz find herself and her voice, and allow Tobin to be there for her as she did.
Now for my problems. Firstly, I felt the pacing was pretty slow. We were taken real time through sooo many things happening that the book felt much longer than it actually was. Despite that, the conflict Liz has with her sister is not given enough attention, I don’t think, including their big talk about everything that happened- there was so so much more to unpack there, and given that the sister drama was the most stressful/serious of it all for me, I really wanted more resolution in that and I just didn’t get it.
And then we have….the epilogue. Everything was tied up so ridiculously neatly up in a bow which kind of rubs me the wrong way when it’s done. I understand we want to see the couple’s HEA, but I don’t need every single little thing to be addressed and wrapped up perfectly because it just becomes unrealistic. But THEN they did something so absurd I actually said “oh please no, let this be a joke.” I honestly could not take it. If you read this please contact me, we need to talk.
Regular chapters- 4 stars
Book plus epilogue-2 stars
Average- 3.5 stars