That Was Then

Cecilia Gray writes about first love, second chances, and forever friendships. With echoes of Anita Shreve and Jodi Picoult, Gray's Second Chance series follows three best friends searching for hope and home during pandemic America.Elissa can't wait to get back to how life was before the pandemic. She misses griping about whose turn it is to refill the office coffeepot. She misses happy hour with her best friends. She misses missing her husband after his long day at the office.But her first week that should be back to normal is anything but what she expects. Elissa's husband wants to move on to new and better things, her friends don't seem to have her back, and her boss presents with her with an impossible choice.With her life upended, Elissa ends up in the most unexpected of places: crashing on a futon in the messy studio apartment of her friendly but oh-so-young neighborhood coffee barista, who shows Elissa it's never too late for a second chance at life.How far would you go for a fresh start?Follow three best friends amidst upheavals that send them crashing into unexpected romantic entanglements, unexplored career choices, and fresh starts they had assumed were long past possible. These full-length (300 pages) compelling contemporary novels stand on their own or can be read as a series.In That Was Then, the quarantine tears open the secrets of a frayed marriage.In Any Day Now, family expectations clash with a daughter's newfound dreams.In We Are Forever, an unexpected death leads to the possibility of a new life.