Here’s what A Second Chance gets right that most coming-of-age fiction doesn’t: it shows manipulation as a process, not an event.

Mikaila and Chara are best friends. Asa is the person who enters and begins, quietly, to dismantle what they have. Asher Frend doesn’t rush this. The dated chapter structure builds the timeline deliberately, and Mikaila’s first-person narration — competitive, perceptive, spirited — keeps you inside the experience even as the reader begins to see what she can’t yet. The line that captures the book’s core: “I realized he didn’t like me. He liked the control he had over me.”

That realization, when it comes, doesn’t feel like a plot twist. It feels like remembering something you’d been trying not to know.

Set in Maryland and Connecticut beach towns, the book carries a particular kind of summer melancholy — everything supposed to be carefree, something quietly unraveling anyway. Multiple perspectives let Frend land the resolution through Chara’s eyes, which gives the ending a completeness that a single narrator couldn’t have delivered.

The faith thread is woven in with a light hand. It functions as a resource the characters carry into hard moments, not a corrective the story imposes on them. The parallel father-daughter storylines expand the emotional register in ways that reward careful readers.

This is a book that suits the transition seasons — the end of one thing, the uncertain beginning of another. It’s about what second chances actually require of you, which is more than most people expect.

The US Review of Books recommends it. The Literary Titan Silver Award, Christian Books Excellence Award, Christ Lit Award, and Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist designation back that up.

For readers who grew up on Sarah Dessen’s beach settings and want something that trades the romance focus for something with more suspense and emotional weight — this is where that book lives.

Get your copy: A Second Chance on Amazon

What reviewers are saying:
“I realized he didn’t like me. He liked the control he had over me.” — US Review of Books

About Asher Frend
ASHER FREND writes clean young adult fiction with a thread of faith, a sharp edge of suspense, and characters who are trying to do the right thing when it would be easier to walk away. Their stories blend coming-of-age pressure with real emotional stakes, then build toward hope without pretending life is simple. When Asher is not writing, they are usually spending time with their spouse and son and getting out for long walks to clear their head and untangle the next plot problem.