REVIEW: You Can’t Hurry Second Chances by Michelle Stimpson
A heartwarming small-town tale of rediscovering joy in unexpected places. Starting over isn’t easy, but sometimes it’s exactly what we need.
Newly divorced and determined to prove she can stand on her own, Joyce Hicks moves back to small-town Texas, leaving behind the life she has known for decades for a fresh start in her late father’s home. Unfinished renovations force her to share her kitchen with her tenant, Gabriella Santos, an aspiring chef with dreams of opening a restaurant inspired by her Black and Mexican roots. What begins as an inconvenience blossoms into an unlikely friendship between the two women as they learn to navigate their shared space.
Just as her life begins to settle, Joyce’s summer plans upend when her grandson, Elijah, is dropped off for an unexpected seven-week stay, dredging up all kinds of buried things from her past—including visits from her ex-husband, judgment from her daughter, and insecurities that she never quite healed from. Meanwhile, Gabriella’s passion for cooking and her vibrant personality infuse the household with energy, even as she faces her own struggles with self-doubt and heartbreak.
Together, Joyce, Gabriella, and Elijah form a patchwork family that supports each other through life’s highs and lows. When an old flame, Richard, reappears in Joyce’s life, she must decide whether to embrace love head-on or to slow down and wait just a little longer for her happy ending.
Dear Ms. Stimpson,
Two years ago I enjoyed “Sisters with a Side of Greens, so I was looking forward to trying “You Can’t Hurry Second Chances.” Both books feature older characters facing up to changing a lifetime’s worth of doing things certain ways, yummy sounding food plus some family relationships.
Gen X’er Joyce Hicks has been raised a certain way by her parents – you show respect to your elders and, if you’re a woman, you find a good husband and smooth over all the cracks in everyone’s lives to maintain the marriage. But after thirty years, she’s realized that this isn’t enough for her anymore and now, after a divorce, faces moving back to her grandmother’s house in a small Texas town. Joyce is no dummy and has paid to have her house turned into a duplex for extra income – or that was the plan before the money ran out so now she and her new tenant will need to share the kitchen until Joyce starts drawing on her retirement funds.
Gabriella Santos is a personal whirlwind and an amazing chef now that she’s accepted the dual use of the kitchen. Gabriella is determined to have her own restaurant where she can cook her own Blaxican fusion recipes. One thing Joyce notices is that Gabriella feels like she has to smooth over her own family issues, just like Joyce has. Then Joyce’s daughter announces that her son, EJ, will need to stay with his grandmother – no asking, just an announcement. Oh, and one of Joyce’s old friends is also back in town plus Joyce has been strong-armed into a women’s book club at the library. When things go wrong, can Joyce find her own strength and the strength to ask for help?
A lot of the issues covered in the story are timeless – changes in attitudes as we age, generational misunderstandings, women cracking under the pressure that society and their families put on them to be in charge of so much. Joyce faces her (daddy’s girl) daughter’s anger at being the one to leave her marriage. Her ex-husband is mystified that doing everything is suddenly not what Joyce wants anymore. To add a little more social pressure, Joyce realizes that some people in town still remember her from her childhood and continue to revere her grandmother. And Gabriella seems to be headed into the type of romantic relationship that Joyce just escaped from.
At first Joyce seems very straightlaced and rigid in her expectations. But that is the way she was brought up and now that she’s thrown off some marital restraints, she’s hesitating to upend her life any more. She’s frustrated at her daughter’s response to her actions but it still takes Joyce a while to put her foot down about Terri’s attitude because – she’s still Terri’s mother.
Gabriella learns more about why Joyce left her husband, what being accepted in a family should look like, and takes a hard look at her own romantic relationship. Gabriella also blossoms under the praise for her (yummy sounding) tweaks of Black and Mexican food plus learns about and reads Joyce’s grandmother’s copy of “The Green Book” which gives her just the idea she needs for a cooking contest.
I was startled about one hurdle that Joyce has to face but it serves as the catalyst for Joyce to finally overcome her reluctance to ask for help and frees her from hearing the voices trying to constrict her actions as her own when they’re really coming from others.
The book ends with a HFN relationship for Joyce, new opportunities for Gabriella, and with Joyce’s family finally seeming to accept the new her. I zipped through it but I think it’s a book to be appreciated more by Gen X age and above. B
~Jayne
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This sounds too much like real life for me to enjoy reading it.
@LML: There’s definitely no fantasy or make-believe in it.