This is the guidebook of second chances, of learning that no matter what life dishes up you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get on with it. It is about learning to love again, not only someone else but also yourself.

The story is about Izzie and Dakota and I have to say that they were just two of the best characters I have read in a long long time.

Izzie and her girls – who are hysterical by the way, live next door to Dakota, and you would have to be blind not to give the man an admiring glance.

But Izzy has her head elsewhere after the death of her father. She is also dealing with an ex that quite frankly needs to get the heck out of her life. He really was an ass.

Life for Izzie is routine, she has her pattern and as much as she may not want to admit it – she really needs to change things up a bit, she is old before her time. So when she meets Dakota it was so special, this immovable woman, so entrenched in her ways, up again a man that just calls it as he sees it and he sees a woman that he wants.

Now, not one to accept change she does what she does best and digs her heels in, refusing to see what is right in front of her face but this is one lesson she is going to have to get with the program pretty damn sharpish because the “wall of muscle” isn’t taking no for an answer.

So can she loosen her grasp on the reigns and give in to what is blatantly obvious that they both want? Or will her barriers force Dakota to walk away?

The shenanigans between the two of them were just spectacular, honestly I was hooked by their tale and their characters.

But I have to say that the author was super clever by introducing Izzie’s daughters into the fray, they were just fantastic, and they were funny, loving and totally the only things that were keeping her sane. They kept her focussed and showed her what life really could be, that she had plenty to give and that she had to cut loose.

The book is beautifully evocative and exquisitely sensitive.