Discover the beauty of second chances at love and life in this heartfelt new novel from New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh.

The Dowager Countess of Stratton, Clarissa Ware, née Greenfield, has just presented her younger daughter to the ton, and the rest of her life belongs only to herself. She returns to Ravenswood, intending to spend the summer alone there. But the summer has other plans for her.

Born a gentleman, Matthew Taylor has chosen to spend his life as the village carpenter. Growing up, he and Clarissa were close—dangerously so, considering his family’s modest fortune. As a young man, he never would have been a suitable match for the daughter of the wealthy Greenfields. Clarissa married Caleb Ware, the Earl of Stratton, so Matthew married another, though he was widowed soon after.

Now everything is different—Clarissa has already lived the life expected of her by society. And Matthew is as attractive and intriguing as he was when they were young. As their summer friendship deepens into romance, they stand together on the precipice of change—essentially the same man and woman they remember being back then, but with renewed passion and the potential to take their lives in an entirely new direction.

My Review:

The Ravenswood series began with Remember Love, when the shit quite spectacularly hit the fan in the Ware Family. Caleb Ware, the Earl of Stratton, brought his latest mistress to his family seat at Ravenswood, and expected everyone to just, well, look the other way. Just like all the people in London did when he spent the Parliamentary season philandering.

He miscalculated – or frankly never calculated at all, because that wasn’t the way things usually worked for him.

Because at Ravenswood, his wife Clarissa is the one who holds everyone’s hearts and keeps everything together. Especially their family. Which means that when his adult son and heir discovers his father in flagrante delicto with his latest paramour, Devlin Stratton rings the curtain down on his father’s shenanigans.

Devlin gets exiled for his inability to “rug sweep” the transgression. The series so far, Remember Love, Remember Me, and Always Remember, has dealt with the fallout of the scandal through the eyes of the adult children whose expectations got upended in the aftermath.

The one person whose perspective we have not really explored until now is that of the now-Dowager Countess of Stratton, Clarissa Ware née Greenfield. This is her story, six years after that scandal broke all their illusions and four years after the death of the philandering Earl.

Clarissa’s story turns out to be the story of what happens when one takes what poet Robert Frost will refer to, nearly a century after the events of this story, as, instead of “The Road Not Taken”, rather the road more travelled by. Clarissa chose the life expected by her class and gender. She married a wealthy man, lived a privileged life of position and ease and was fortunate enough to have five children live to adulthood. Her marriage was reasonably contented and often happy even if her husband was unfaithful practically from their wedding day.

After all, that was also part of that more travelled road.

But as this story opens, Clarissa is in the process of recognizing that her expected path has come to an end. She is on the cusp of her 50th birthday. Her children are all grown and have been successfully launched into the world. Her oldest son is now the Earl, and his wife is the Countess. No one NEEDS her for anything. Not that her family doesn’t love her and isn’t willing to surround her with love and care and entertainment – but she has no purpose of her own.

Which is why she comes home to Ravenswood, alone, to be by herself and sit with herself – or mostly walk with herself – and figure out who SHE is and what SHE wants for this new chapter of her life.

What she learns is that the road LESS traveled, the one she turned away from when she married Caleb Ware, has wound back around to meet her in the person of the best friend she ever had, the then young man who stood and watched as she walked away.

Escape Rating A: This is the book in this series that I was hoping for – and it absolutely was worth the wait!

The story here is all about second chances. Not just a second chance at love, although it is certainly that. But also about second chances at life. They say that it’s never too old to become the person you were meant to be – and this is that kind of story as well.

(It is also very reminiscent of Someone to Care in the author’s Westcott series. So if you liked that you’ll LOVE this! I promise)

What made this entry in this series so satisfying – well, there’s more than one thing. I always adore a story where the would-be romantic partners are a bit more mature because the stakes are in some ways much higher and in others much lower, and that is certainly true here.

Clarissa Greenfield and Matthew Taylor grew up as best friends. They were, to use a more 21st century phrase, each other’s person. The depth of their friendship was certainly turning towards romantic love when they went their separate ways. While they were both of the same class as children, both children of landed gentry, Matthew’s family was at the lowest rung of that scale and Matthew was a second son who would have to make his own way. Clarissa’s family was at the high end, with more than enough wealth that Clarissa would have plenty of money in her own right and was expected to reach even higher in her inevitable marriage.

Also, Clarissa was very willing to do the expected thing, while Matthew marched to the beat of not just his own drummer, but to a cadence that he hadn’t even identified yet. His family expected him to follow one of the traditional paths for second sons, and he rebelled at every turn.

But that was then. Meanwhile, in their now, while their circumstances have diverged even further they have also come back to the same place in similar positions. Both have lost their spouses. Both have reached places in their lives where they do not HAVE to care quite so much about what other people think.

And the friendship that has lain dormant for 30 years is still there, just waiting for a spark to bring it back to life. They are still each other’s person and time has not changed that at all. Even if the entire neighborhood, as well as nearly all of Clarissa’s family, balk at her intimate friendship with a man who has gone rather down in the world – Matthew is the village carpenter after all – while she has gone even further up.

Unlike the story in Someone to Care, Clarissa and Matthew don’t lie about their relationship. They don’t pretend they are not friends, they don’t hide that they are seeing each other after they both decide that they are – whether they should or not.

What made the story work so well was the way that Clarissa makes the decision to live for herself in this latest chapter of her life. She proceeds to take on pretty much all comers, including most of her family, as they question and cajole and attempt to manage her and her relationship with someone who initially seems unsuitable but who is the only truly suitable person for Clarissa to spend the next chapter of her life with in whatever manner she chooses to spend it.

I loved this entry in the series because I was able to identify with Clarissa and the choices and decisions she had to make without feeling like she was out of her time. Her story about second chances and second choices resonated well, as even in her privileged position her problem of what to do and to be now that she has reached the end of the road well traveled but still has plenty of life left to live is something that many of us face even if we’re not in quite such plush circumstances as we face it.

This was also very much the right book at the right time as I was looking for a comfort read this week and I certainly found a lovely one in this book and this series. A series which I sincerely hope continues as there are plenty more Ware cousins and neighborhood acquaintances who could use their own happy ending!