This novel has all the feels, people!

Colton Gentry is a sweet, talented guy who blows up his life not once but twice. And yet he finds the strength to regroup and earn his third act.

I loved every minute of his journey as we follow him through three different timelines: in senior year of high school as a football star; in Nashville as a struggling young musician; in the present day as a trainee sous chef.

When we meet Colton, he’s a hot mess. An alcoholic struggling to deal with the violent death of his best friend, he’s about to self-destruct on stage. Fueled by grief and alcohol, he lets rip at gun owners in the audience and loses everything. His famous wife, his agent, his record label, country and western music fans … all dump him overnight. Only the rehab facility welcomes him.

Sober but broke, he returns to his home town in Kentucky and moves in with his mother. He starts piecing himself back together, but it isn’t easy. His ex-wife’s new relationship is on magazine covers, the gun lobby wants to humiliate him, and he fears he’ll never have the family life he always wanted. Plus recovery is new and the temptation of alcohol is everywhere.

Even so, he adopts an old rescue dog with serious medical problems and begins hanging out with a former teammate and his young family. When Colton  crosses paths with his first love, she offers him a job in her thriving farm-to-table restaurant, and he applies himself to mastering new skills—cooking and babysitting.

Full of humor, tears, joy, southern food and sultry summer nights, this is more than a story of third chances and lost love rekindled. It’s about failing at your dreams only to discover something better—something you never expected. It’s a story about how, “Sometimes, on the grand cosmic scale, the certainty of joy must outweigh the mere possibility of catastrophe.”