Second Chance Summer: A Short Love Story - Shawn Inmon

Can we sneak in a quick summer read on this next-to-last weekend of summer 2015? Why, yes, I believe we can.

Second Chance Summer continues the story of Elizabeth and Steve, who ran into one another on a Christmas tree lot several months back and rekindled an old romance. Now, Steve is on the verge of making a fortune on a high-flying real estate deal involving the construction of a resort hotel in the Philippines. He's about to whisk Elizabeth off on vacation -- just the two of them -- when a typhoon hits the island where his big deal is going down. This intervention by Mother Nature will tax the couple, both physically and financially. But what will it mean for their relationship?

This is the third installment in Inmon's five Second Chance Love stories. He has since collected all five into a single volume. But the stories can be read separately, and the fact that I haven't read any of the others affected neither my understanding nor my enjoyment of this one.

Inmon is a wonderful writer whose romances always deliver. If you enjoy reading contemporary romance, you could do much worse than any -- or all -- of the stories in Second Chance Love.

Feels Like the First Time - Shawn Inmon

I'll be honest: I'm not a huge fan of memoirs. On the other hand, I think everyone of a certain age has somebody in their past who they would date again in a heartbeat. So on that basis, I decided to give Feels Like the First Time a whirl.

The book opens with Shawn, who's in a miserable marriage that he hasn't had the gumption to end, stopping at a drive-through window on his way home from work. There at the window is Dawn, the love of his life. They had lived next door to one another as teenagers, in the late 1970s and early '80s, in a little town in Washington state. First they were friends; then Dawn's mother hired Shawn to tutor her daughter; and then they fell in love. At this point, Dawn's parents -- well, mainly her mother -- decided the relationship needed to end. A couple of youthful missteps sealed the deal, and the two of them were forbidden to see one another again. But Shawn has never forgotten Dawn, and decades later, Fate steps in to bring them together again. It's not all sunshine and roses, however. The two of them have to figure out just what went wrong back then, before they can even think about creating a happy ending at last.

I'm not that much older than these two crazy kids, so I could really relate to Inmon's depiction of his high school and college years, although I felt like that part of the story went on a little too long. But the present-day portion of the book was wonderful. When Dawn says in wonderment, "You're my Shawn" -- yeah, that got me right in the feels.

I would recommend Feels Like the First Time to anybody who grew up in the '70s and '80s, and to anybody who likes a good love story.

Rock 'n Roll Heaven - Shawn Inmon

This one's just plain fun.

Jimmy "Guitar" Velvet has been playing in bands since he was old enough to notice that girls dig a guy with a guitar. That was several decades ago, and while Jimmy once got close to stardom, he's never made it big. He and his fellow band members tour the Pacific Northwest in a converted bus, playing bars and just scraping by. Then one night, traveling between gigs, the brakes go out on the bus and it plunges into a creek. Jimmy is the only member of the band who doesn't get out alive.

But that's just the start of Jimmy's adventure, because St. Peter sends him to Rock 'n Roll Heaven. The streets there are paved in gold CDs, and everybody who was anybody has their own little club. Jimmy can't figure out why all these legendary rockers are welcoming him -- a guy who never made it big -- with open arms. But as it turns out, Jimmy has something special to contribute to Rock 'n Roll Heaven.

Inmon's style is smooth and engaging. Jimmy's a likeable guy, and his reaction to meeting all his heroes is believable. I found Rock 'n Roll Heaven a quick, fun read. If you're looking for a beach read for these last summer days, you could do worse than this book.

And because I know you're dying to know: yes, in Rock 'n Roll Heaven, they really do have a hell of a band.