"second chance at love"

In Los Lobos, fourteen years old Gracie Landon fell in love with eighteen years old Riley Whitefield, but he rejected her as being too young while seeing someone else. Her antics got so out of hand that the local media coverage became known as the Gracie Chronicles; her family, in desperation, shipped Gracie off to live with relatives out of state. Riley married and divorced Pam while Gracie never returned to her hometown for the next fourteen years embarrassed by how she behaved.

Gracie returns home for her younger sister's wedding, but plans to keep a low profile until her older sister coaxes her to help her find who her spouse Zeke is cheating with. Since he is Riley's campaign manager in his run for mayor, the siblings start there. However, Riley catches a mortified Gracie. She explains to Riley what she was doing. He needs to become mayor if he wants to inherit his uncle's 97 million estate and worries that a scandal by Zeke could hurt his campaign. As they work to uncover the truth about Zeke's nocturnal activities, they fall in love, but sensible Gracie refuses to take any risks when it comes to Riley and Pam is back causing further woes to make her seem unbalanced.

This second chance at love (at least on her part) is a fun tale as Riley realizes he is FALLING FOR GRACIE, but no one believes him including himself while she concludes that she still loves him and compares men to him. Though the suspense is soft as Mayor Franklin Yardley also has 97 million reasons to insure he is reelected, contemporary fans will fall for Gracie and Riley.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted February 20, 2005

Summary

First comes love, then comes marriage. . . Or that was Gracie's plan, anyway, at the ripe old age of fourteen. She loved eighteen-year-old heartthrob Riley with a desperation that made her a town legend. Even now that she's all grown up, the locals in sleepy Los Lobos won't let her forget her youthful crush.

. . .but it's not as easy as it looks. And how can she, when she's face-to-face with Riley at every turn? The onetime bad boy has come back to town seeking respectability-but the sparks that fly between them are anything but respectable! Gracie's determined to keep her distance, but when someone sets out to ruin both their reputations, the two discover that first love is sometimes better the second time around.