Tag: trauma

Review: Second Song: Second Chance School by Con Riley

Rating: 5🌈

“This book is set in a small, British independent school specialising in trauma-informed teaching.”

Second Song sees a return to beloved place and school from Riley’s heartwarming Learning to Love series, one of my absolute favorites of contemporary fiction. That’s the Glenn Harber School near Porthperrin, Cornwall.

As the quote indicates above, it’s a very special school, full of talented and passionate teachers and students who have their own heartfelt stories to share.

Into this amazing environment, Riley sets up the first in another series, Second Chance School, and the beginning book, Second Song, about Rowan Bryn, a hopeful music teacher, who’s traumatized past has caused him to lose his ability to sing in front of others. It’s also about Liam Sexton, ex forces Army Royal Engineers, injured by an explosion on tour that left him with a hearing disorder.

A school in need of temporary teaching help and a crumbling library in need of demolition brings both men to the Glenn Harber School, second chances to rebuild their lives, and gain a new love and community that will help them overcome their past trauma.

Some of my favorite characters are present here from the Learning to Love books. There’s the ever wonderful Charles Heppel-Eaves who always arrives surrounded by glitter and an aura of love, Dom Dymond and his child, Maisie, and Luke, naturally. And so many other standouts throughout this incredibly moving novel, like Teo, little brave Hadi, Noah and his lamb who started it all.

But it’s Rowan and Liam in their own tenuous brave journeys towards dealing with their past trauma and their own new relationship that captures our hearts and engages us totally in this story.

Riley writes with such sensitivity and compassion about the stages of grief and understanding that it takes for Rowan and Liam to go through in order to overcome their own fears and pain in order to be able to heal and support each other as they too deal with their trauma.

The men are real and what they have undergone feels raw and believable. So do all the events as they occur to get them through to a moving and loving ending.

I can’t help but hope we get more tales where Matt, Blake, Neck Brace and the rest of Liam’s Royal Engineers family get their own stories and HEA. If they too are located near Porthperrin and this school, then I’d be a happy reader indeed.

Second Song: Second Chance School by Con Riley is a highly recommended book, as is the connected series, Learning to Love. Put all on your must read list!

Second Chance School:

✓ Second Song #1

◦ Second Shot #2 – April 30,2025

Buy link

Second Song: Second Chance School

Blurb:

Second Song (Second Chance School #1)

Page-turning heat and hurt-comfort start on a Cornish cliffside and end at a school where not only students heal from past pain.

Do first times count if you forget them?

Rowan: I once lost a national singing contest. My consolation prize? A night I can’t remember and the tattoo on my bare bottom going viral. Six years later, I’m ready to rise like a phoenix from those shameful public ashes even if my singing days are over. Training as a music teacher is the second chance I need to prove I can be trusted to help children with their own trauma.

I can’t get distracted by falling for the wounded hero who saved me on my first day in Cornwall.

Liam: Blast damage forced me to leave the Army, and guilt keeps me running from those I hurt in the process. I don’t intend to fall for a pretty stranger trapped on a cliffside, but something about Rowan makes me crave more than our one heated night together, especially when he responds like I’m the first man to ever touch his heart or body.

If he wants a second chance here in Cornwall, I’ll stay and fight until he gets one.

Featuring a musician too bruised to sing and the soldier ready to battle for him, Second Song starts the Second Chance School series. Expect found family, a spectrum of diverse characters, and a HEA fit for angsty heroes.

This spin-off shared-world series aligns with the much-adored Learning to Love series. No prior knowledge is necessary to enjoy this standalone full-length novel.

• Publisher: Figment Ink (May 8, 2024)

• Publication date: May 8, 2024

• Language: English

• Print length: 314 pages

Artist: Natasha Snow

A MelanieM Release Day Review: Joker (Executioners #2) by J.M. Dabney

Rating:   5 Stars out of 5

Joker, what a misnomer, but Jackson Webb’s friends were idiots. He’d joined Executioners almost three years earlier after the lead singer King caught him playing his guitar behind his garage. It broke up the monotony of his life, but once he got bored he’d move on to another distraction. He wasn’t nice. He sure as hell wasn’t friendly. He was what he was, his friends handled his attitude and standoffish nature just fine. At thirty-eight he was pretty sure he was too stuck in his way to change shit now.

Demetri “Dem” Urban was settling into a new life in the middle of nowhere. Okay, he was hiding from everywhere in a kitchen as far removed from his five-star kitchen back in New York. Gideon invited him to stay with him and his wife for awhile just until he could get everything back on track. He didn’t see it happening, but he had to admit the scenery wasn’t bad even if the man had the personality of a rabid, man-eating bear. Dem did like a challenge and that fit Joker Webb perfectly.

My first sighting of Joker was in Ghost (Executioners, #1), a deeply moving story that served as my first introduction to D.M. Dabney and that author’s interlocking series (Twirled World Ink, Brawlers and Executioners and hopefully more).  Of course, I started with the most recent in the series which has turned out a fascinating, fortuitous move and I’m now moving backwards to the beginning series.  And Joker aka Jackson Webb has appeared everywhere, a dark, violent presence, sometimes just a fleeting reference, sometimes more as a participant in a rescue or beatdown, but Joker has been an enigmatic thread running through three series who now when ready in Dabney’s mind, explodes into the cacophony that is his heartrending, beautiful and oh so memorable story.

Forewarning.  If you’ve read Ghost, which is where I fell in love with Joker, you knew peeling back the edges of Joker’s armor would be like staring into the abyss.  His past is stomach churning and even though the abuse and descriptions of what happened to him is handled “off stage” , there is no space for your mind and heart to run from his scars…physical, mental, emotional that are revealed here.  They feel intense, all too real, and full of suffering of the unimaginable kind.  For some of you, these are triggers and you should be aware of the impact they will have.  Even if they aren’t triggers, prepared to have the abuse that Jackson suffered stay with you  long after the story is over, which is as it should be I suppose.

Jackson is the town vigilante/Paladin and his friends’ worry now that Harper has found love, happiness and safety with Ghost. Jackson aka Joker is still on his mission to protect and deliver his own forms of justice to those thugs/bullies in town who have been under the protection of the old corrupt (and now dead) Sheriff.  Given that mission it’s no surprise that he’s often found in one of the jail cells,  with his friends called to bail him out.  Outside of jail, his little dog Killer is his constant companion and yes, unacknowledged therapy dog.  He’s violent, untouchable, moody, and broken.  Yet everything about him shouts need.  I wanted his story from the minute I met him in Ghost.  And love him completely.

Then comes Dem, a man from a loving home who sets his eyes on Joker, knows that he and that broken man are somehow ‘meant’ for each other like his mom and dad. Dem is unique. Some see him as broken too. Dem is also a character you come across in Ghost, but here Dem becomes a complete person.  I loved his parents, the background Dabney supplies for him and his reasons for being in this small town. He’s pretty easy to fall in love with himself.   In the book, it all makes perfect sense as do the characters.  Dabney’s characterizations and writing is so good, so perfect for the themes the author chose and the paths the story needs to take, that all I could do is be pulled in, totally absorbed by the drama and evolving relationships.

Dem’s pursuit of Joker shakes the man to his emotional and mental foundation.  It’s everything he fears and has no reason to understand.  Love. J.M. Dabney creates two of the most perfect, broken, believable characters and then takes us on their journey towards a love only they can find with each other, and a  small dog named Killer.  At times, your heart will break over the blackness and evil suffered, sometimes your breath will catch with hope as they get close at times a relationship only to see it crash under the weight of the past and reality, and finally  your heart gets to soar with laughter and love at what the author has wrought out of darkness and pain.

How I love Joker (Executioners #2) by J.M. Dabney and the entire series.  I highly recommend it and Ghost.  Start with Ghost and then read Joker.  And look for all my reviews of the Twirled World Ink, and Brawlers series by J.M. Dabney to come.  I’ll be covering them all and the evolution of a universe.

Cover Design: Winterheart Design.  I think the cover captures Joker perfectly.

Buy Links: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Book Details:

Published August 29th 2017
Edition LanguageEnglish
URL https://www.jmdabneyauthor.com/executioners
setting Georgia (United States)

Series Executioners: