Maybe This Time: A Second Chance Romance by Susan B. James is warm and delightful, an exquisite blend of time travel and romance. Jennifer "Jen" Knight just turned forty-nine. In fact the story begins on her birthday with all the fuzziness and awkwardness she feels, believing that "Happy Birthdays" are no longer required, when something strange happens. Her niece, by sheer accident, transports them both to 1988 and she comes face to face with the man who had been her first husband in another life. Is this an opportunity for a second chance, to get it right this time?

Expertly narrated by Stephanie Bentley in a voice that is smooth and mesmerizing, the story follows the hilarious journey of a popular British actress through time. What happens when we get another chance at love? Jen is thrust into a completely different world from what she’s recently known and the author does an impeccable job in highlighting the differences in setting. The conflict comes out brilliantly through the narrative. We meet a woman who feels uncomfortable on her birthday, she is conscious of her age. Being thrust into another time is something that could be a wonderful adventure, but meeting someone who had once been her love is where the problem begins.

The author uses the setting to deepen the conflict as readers watch the protagonist, wondering if she’ll settle in the past or find ways to return to her celebrity life in the present. But their future could have issues as well and can her lover and computer geek Lance Davies find solutions to them? Maybe This Time: A Second Chance Romance features compelling and sophisticated characters, an intricate plot, and a conflict that moves the story forward in powerful ways. I very much enjoyed this audio book. While the story moved fast, it was the characters that caught my attention the most.

Maybe This Time: A Second Chance Romance is a heartfelt work of dramatic and romantic fiction by author Susan B. James. Using time travel as a means to literally turn back the clock, the central plot of the tale begins when protagonist Jennifer Knight has to return to her own past in 1988 because of an accident by her niece, Kat. Jennifer is forty-nine and doing well in life as an actress, so having to go back to Lance, her ex-husband and self proclaimed biggest mistake, is something she has to find a lot of courage to do. But Lance, in seeing his wife’s future as a place where he doesn’t exist, becomes determined to change their future and get another chance with her.

Steamy romance and quirky time travel combine in this delightfully enjoyable romance tale by Susan B. James. It’s clear that the author experiences the cut-throat world of acting herself, which adds a great deal of reality and compassion to Jennifer’s character throughout the tale, and it was wonderful to see a protagonist set so far from the perky, perfect youths of most romances on the scene. Fans of the romance genre are sure to enjoy the steamier scenes, but what really appealed to me was the retrospective journey of juggling the life you have now versus the life that could have been if things had taken a different turn with someone you once loved. Overall, this makes Maybe This Time a highly relatable and emotive romance suitable for anyone who’s ever felt that way about love.

As well as being an excellent story, the quality of the audiobook material was very high. Stephanie Bentley narrates with clarity and humor, really capturing Jennifer’s sarcasm and her general apathy with her life, then shifting to a brighter, more hopeful and emotional tone when Lance re-enters the scene. Some of the British accents were a little shaky for the clearly American narrator, but the sense of character was strong enough for me that I enjoyed the tale all the same!