By C.L. Bloom
While small-town romances flood the shelves, second-chance stories tug at heartstrings, and the grumpy-sunshine trope refuses to fade, one truth remains undeniable: the best love stories are the ones that never had the chance to begin. In Second Chance for My Brother’s Grumpy Friend, C.L. Bloom brings readers a tender, heat-charged, deeply human romance that proves some connections survive time, distance, and every missed moment in between.
Part emotional reckoning, part small-town immersion, and part irresistible slow burn, the novel begins not with a reunion — but with a collision. Delaney Page, who left Harbor Keep ten years ago to chase a faster, shinier life in Los Angeles, returns home for her brother’s wedding. She expects awkward family dinners and polite small talk. What she doesn’t expect is a hotel disaster that plants her directly at the doorstep of Cruz Maddox — her brother’s best friend, the quiet golden boy who once stole her heart without ever knowing it.
From that moment, Bloom sets the stage for a charged, magnetic story. Cruz, now broader, quieter, and even more impossible to ignore, lives alone in a handcrafted cabin perched above the bay. He escaped the rigid world of the military for woodworking, solitude, and routines that keep everything — especially emotions — in order. Delaney was the one feeling he never trusted himself to touch. She was always off-limits. Always too important.
Then the storm hits. Roads flood. Power flickers. Choices narrow.
And Delaney becomes his unexpected houseguest — whether either of them is ready or not.
What follows is a slow unfurling of everything they buried a decade ago: teasing that turns electric, memories that sharpen into desire, and one moment — one kiss — that shatters the distance they’ve clung to for years. But when morning comes, reality settles in. Her life is in the city. His is anchored in Harbor Keep. And both are convinced the other couldn’t possibly feel the same.
Bloom exposes the tenderness, fear, and yearning that define second chances, weaving a story that makes it clear: some storms don’t destroy — they reveal.
At the heart of the novel lies the emotional architecture of their connection — a love shaped by time, tested by distance, and reignited by fate:
A runaway youth crush that never faded, only deepened
A grumpy craftsman who hides tenderness beneath discipline
A confident city woman rediscovering the girl she thought she outgrew
Forced proximity that turns tension into truth
A small town where gossip becomes prophecy
A wedding, a storm, and a chance neither can afford to lose
Bloom’s narrative is warm, funny, and breathtakingly intimate, capturing the messy beauty of timing, courage, and the strange alchemy of returning to the place that remembers who you were. Second Chance for My Brother’s Grumpy Friend is a testament to the connections we never fully let go of — and the love stories that wait patiently for their moment.
Written with heart, charm, and the slow-burn heat readers crave, the novel invites us to ask: what happens when the one who got away was always meant to stay?
Book Details
Title: Second Chance for My Brother’s Grumpy Friend
Author: C.L. Bloom
Genre: Small-Town Romance · Second Chance · Forced Proximity
Available now on Amazon.
