The Second Chance Book Club by Stephanie Butland

Timy reviews The Second Chance Book Club, a standalone novel by Stephanie Butland.

An eARC was received by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Possible fit for The Sound of Madness Reading Challenge 2025 prompts:

Joker prompt that goes with anything: Freed from Desire

How can you believe in luck, when you have nothing?

September is at her wits’ end. For all the hours she works, there’s never enough money to support her and her boyfriend. September has nothing to look forward to. She just keeps plodding along. There’s no other option.

Then the letter comes. September, who was adopted as a baby, has inherited a house from a great-aunt she never knew she had. It would make sense to sell it. But when she visits for the first time and sees the place – the orange gate, the garden, the tree, the bumble-bee door knocker – she realises she doesn’t want to let it go. Not yet. And then the members of the book club arrive, and she begins to discover the story of the family she didn’t know.

September realises she feels safe here. It’s home. She’s making friends. And this is just the beginning.

“It’s on the top of September’s tongue to say, You don’t need to tell us if you don’t want to. But then she realises: she’s trying to protect herself. If Esin wants to talk she must listen.”

Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield seemed like a good fit, seeing as it’s about restarting, and looking at every day as a new opportunity. Also, it has a book metaphore, sooo.

I picked up this book on NetGalley in the spur of the moment, mostly because of the title, but also because I wanted something lighter to read. I wasn’t familiar with the author or her work, so I had no comparison. It was mostly just a gut feeling that I might like it. Thankfully, I wasn’t wrong.

The Second Chance Book Club tells the story of two women – September’s in the present and Lucia’s in the 1970s/80s. They couldn’t be more different, and yet, blood ties them together. Lucia has a privileged life, and a happy one, although it’s not without losses and heartaches as she has to deal with her family’s prejudices, their selfishness, and the fact they care more about themselves and what people think of them than about each other. But she never gives up looking for her niece and grandniece after she loses touch with September’s mother, April.

September, on the other hand, grows up in a middle-class family who aren’t particularly rich but who give her everything she needs. As an adult, she is an orphan, she is stuck in a relationship that doesn’t make her happy and she struggles to keep up with debts. Until one day everything changes and her life turns upside down.

The Second Chance Book Club brings up interesting questions, such as, what happens when you finally find yourself in a position where you don’t have to worry about anymore? How do you cope with that? How does it change you, as a person? And whether money is what makes you happy, after all. I liked the found family theme of the book (I’m a sucker for that trope) and how September comes to terms with her past and with herself, although I’m not entirely sure I liked her much. I found myself more invested in Lucia’s life, and how she fights against conventions and becomes a pillar in her community through her book clubs. I particularly liked her idea of keeping journals about daily kindnesses given by and to her. We all need a little bit more kindness, and if we look closely enough, we might find it too around us.

This is, well, not particularly a slow-paced book, but not a lot of things happen in it. The focus is more on the interpersonal relationships, and on the main characters, which could be boring to some. Butland’s writing kept me invested, although it has to be said, that she has very simple and very readable prose. The Second Chance Book Club is more of a slice-of-life kind of book if I have to put a label on it. It has a small, diverse cast of characters, of whom I would have liked to learn a bit more if I’m being honest, as they didn’t take up a lot of space, except maybe one of them, but I’m not going to spoil it. And even though I liked reading this book, I don’t think it’s going to leave a lasting memory in my head. It was nice, and it did deal with heavy topics such as racism, adoption, family fall-outs, toxic relationships, but even so, I didn’t connect with it on an emotional level as much as I would have liked.

The Second Chance Book Club could be a good choice if you want a cozy, quiet reading weekend with a book that won’t require much effort. Sometimes, the light, fluffy books are the ones we need, after all.