I don’t do a lot of book recommendations on this blog. I usually just share what I’m reading with you all and leave it at that. A rare once in a while, I find something I love enough to pimp to my readers.

Jay Quinn’s novel, Back Where He Started, is one of those books I would recommend to anyone. It’s sweet and poignant, and funny. I laughed and even shed a few tears while I was reading it. If you’re a fan of romance, this is a book you have to read. I can’t say enough wonderful things about it.

They say true freedom arrives when all the kids are gone and the dog dies. With his family grown and his husband Zack having decided to become a middle-aged clich and marry his secretary, Chris Thayer is about to discover that starting life over at 48 is just as complicated, frustrating and thrilling as the first time around. After relocating to the North Carolina beach community of Emerald Isle, Chris finds a new appreciation of his role as the heart of the home to his grown children and becomes involved in the patchwork lives of his neighbors. To his unending surprise, he also finds himself the object of a new man’s affections, a rowdy jack-of-all-trades with an unnervingly direct stare. In the same quiet, understated manner that he demonstrated in his critically acclaimed first novel, Metes and Bounds, Jay Quinn gives the traditional Southern novel a decidedly untraditional twist.