A Second Chance at Paris

Were you that girl in high school? The one no one noticed, the one who pined for the gorgeous guy whose interests lay elsewhere?

If you were, perhaps, then, you can empathize with Celeste London, aka Celeste Haverford, aka Mary Haverford, aka Hairy Mary.

Back in high school, Celeste's midnight-colored hair was blue more than black, and her intelligence and mature disposition tended to put off both friends and admirers. Her only companions were her father and sister.

Now, ten years later, Celeste is a renowned astrophysicist, her father is battling Alzheimer's, and Celeste's love for Ion Blackwell, the dark-haired, blue-eyed gypsy boy of her youth, has not diminished at all. Before she can contemplate her ten-year high school reunion, Celeste has to attend a conference in Paris, which she first visited as a teenager and where her love of Ion took root. She watched him on a riverboat tour of the Seine, and her youthful heart was lost to him.

When she arrives back in Paris, she takes a riverboat cruise, intending to enjoy the Parisian sights. She does not expect that Ion Blackwell will be on this same boat, or that, by the end of the trip, she will have agreed to spend time with him.

What is so lovely about this book is that Cole McCade connects you immediately with his characters. Celeste is a heroine who invests you in her story so fully that you will find yourself nearly desperate to make sure that she will be all right. For all of her professional success, she needs love in her life, and only one man will do.

McCade gets us into the minds of both of his characters, and you feel Ion's melancholy as deeply as he does. He's the successful writer of a young adult series centered around a spunky heroine named Violet Sparks. As he writes the last of the series, though, he's struggling to reconnect with his heroine. There is a girl from his past who inspired him to create Violet, and he yearns for this girl with a wistful sadness. Ion needs love as much as Celeste does.

When the two of them cross paths, their attraction is immediate. Celeste, of course, knows who Ion is, but he has no clue that she is someone he knew from school. As Celeste's feelings deepen for him, she increasingly runs the risk that Ion will find out who she is. And of course he will want to know why she didn't just tell him at the start.

It isn't that Celeste doesn't want Ion to know about their shared past; she wishes he did know. In many ways, she is desperate for him to remember her. But she is scared. What if he can't recall her because he didn't know she existed in the first place? She has dreamt of him and yearned for him for years. She can't tell him who she is because doing so risks his remembering that she was of no interest to him when they first knew each other.

McCade infuses this book with a hopeful sense of what could be, yet at the same time, you worry for Celeste. How will Ion react when he realizes that he knows her? The relationship the two build together in Paris is sweet and romantic, and it has its share of hot headboard rocking. Strap on your vibrators, girls, because Cole McCade writes some fantastic sexy times.

Even better is how he writes his characters. Celeste and Ion are utterly lovable. What better than the geeky high school girl getting the man of her dreams? Perhaps it is the man of her dreams being worth of her.

From the first chapter, you will fall in love with this book. You will be mesmerized and won't want to put it down til you finish. When Celeste was in high school, she was known as Mary Haverford or Hairy Mary. She was awkward, nerdy, and secretly in love with one of the most gorgeous boys, Ion Blackwell. After grad school she decided to go by Celeste London and reinvent herself. The fact that her father, an astrophysicist, was very well known, was another reason to change her name. Celeste wanted to be well known on her own merits. On her way to Paris for a conference, memories of her last visit there are bittersweet. That's when her high school class was there and she almost admitted her feelings to Ion. On a whim, Cel takes an evening river boat ride, when Ian Blackwell, approaches her but doesn't recognize her. They start a friendship, however, Celeste knows she's still in love with Ion. As much as she wants to tell him the truth about her, Cel keeps her silence. Ion has always been I love with Mary but was always to shy in high school to speak to her. He is now a famous author and has a series called Violet Sparks, which are about the girl he knew in high school. This beautiful story is really about second chances. I received the ARC from the author and even though I had never heard of him, I look forward to his future books. Highly reccomend this book.