Rose McKittrick

Widowed historian Cariad Baker is trying to keep her life small: two grieving children, one half-finished book about the Dark Ages, and absolutely no romantic complications.

Then Adam King moves in next door.

Adam is a tattooed ex-NHL goalie, now coaching the Nottingham Outlaws, and apparently raising a teenager who technically isn’t his son. He is charming, infuriating, far too attractive, and exactly the sort of man Cari does not trust.

Their first impressions are terrible. Cari judges him before she understands him; Adam clocks it instantly and decides she is exactly as uptight as she looks. Their children immediately make everything worse. Soon the two households are tangled together through teen drama, escaped guinea pigs, broken fences, family disasters, Christmas chaos and Cari’s secret attempt to write a romance novel inspired by the man next door she is definitely not falling for.

Wanting someone new is complicated when the world still sees you as a grieving wife, but you’re not sure you ever truly were one. And Adam has his own damage: a fractured family, a daughter he failed to raise, and a lifelong terror of becoming the sort of father he survived.

Not the End is a laugh-out-loud funny contemporary romance about midlife desire, messy families, second chances, and the people who arrive in your life when you thought the story was already over. 

Eight months after Adam King moved in next door and turned Cariad Baker’s carefully contained life upside down, things are going suspiciously well.

Their two households have half-merged into one chaotic blended family: teenagers in love, a small boy who worships Adam, an anxious rescue dog with behavioural issues, and an ever-growing list of reasons why living in separate houses is starting to look ridiculous. Adam wants a proper home together. Cari wants to believe she can have that without disappearing into someone else’s life again.

Then Adam suggests a summer trip to Raleigh, North Carolina, the city where he was young, famous, fearless and adored. For Cari, stepping into that world means facing the uncomfortable truth that the man she loves had an entire life before her. A bigger one. A louder one. One that may still be calling him.

As Adam is drawn back into the glamour, pressure and possibility of his old hockey world, Cari’s own unexpected success as a romance novelist starts dragging her out of hiding. Home, work, money, marriage, children, ambition: suddenly, every part of their future is up for negotiation. Adam has spent years trying to become the sort of man who stays. Cari has spent years learning how to survive without needing – or being needed by – anyone too much. Building a life together may ask far more of them than either expected.

A Fresh Start is a funny, tender and sharply observed romance about blended families, second chances, midlife ambition, and discovering that new beginnings are rarely clean, simple or conveniently located in the same postcode.