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After being confessed to by his bestie/crush Millie, Ford leaves her without so much as a glance or a shadow of an explanation because he knocked up his ex before they had broken up and now he's like "well shit I gotta marry her and ghost my best friend slash the woman of my life I guess". Ford and evil pregnant girlfriend get married, he doesn't reach out to his bestie Millie for 10 years, he gets a divorced from evil wife, and then Millie and Ford meet up again when he's hired as the coach of the university team that she also works with as a staff member.

This book was lame as fuck. Combined together, Millie and Ford have the personality of a single wet sock in the first part of this book. This whole second-chance romance thing clearly didn't get the memo that to get to the second chance, you have to do a little more than waltz back into someone's life, grovel for a total of 2 seconds, and then profess your undying lust for the woman you turned your back on. Worse still, said woman is a complete doormat who's almost immediately like oooh what if this is the universe giving us a second chance? *heart eye emoji x 3000*. Girl, did it hurt? When your last remaining shred of dignity crumbled to dust? Because witnessing it sure made ME hurt. Like I'm not asking for a bitter Betty but the portrayal of her emotions was so underwhelming and disappointing.

That's actually not the worst part. Both characters are pathetic, fine, whatever. The book has this readable quality that made me want to not stop despite me not exactly having a good time, with the fact that there was neither chemistry nor a single brain cell to be found on these pages. However, the real clusterfuck started happening when this book turned from wet sock festival to ooga-booga me caveman you my woman as soon as this second-chance romance decided to forgo the ROMANCE part to go straight into "let's have sex on a desk RIGHT NOW". From this point onwards, nothing made sense or made me want to root for these characters from the sheer number of red flags that started raising one after the other.

First red flag: Millie is "one of the boys", her origin story is basically "my one best girl friend (aka the aforementioned evil ex-wife) and stole the-man-who's-not-my-man and ever since then I just stopped trying to befriend girls, and I'm such a bro that all my life revolves around knowing all the rules of football". Girlie of course has a single woman side-kick whose only role is to tell Millie to fuck the coach. Her personality revolves around sex and sex only. I'm trying to find a single moment where she wasn't talking about her or Millie's sex life and I cannot for the life of me remember any.

Second red flag: there isn't a single motherfucking man in this book who understands what respecing your romantic partner's wishes means. Millie's ex-boyfriend is lame as fuck and thinks he can just kiss her forehead because "he's so used to it" since they dated like a solid year ago. Ok cool whatever you're supposed to find him pitiful so I get it. But what of our main car brand named caveman slash "hero"? I understand that Millicent the Doormat is clueless and sort-of self-sabotaging, even though I think she was within her rights to question the Ford pick-up truck since he all but completely ghosted her after she kissed him and then came back like a wrecking ball demanding EVERYTHING from her. But every time she tried to get some space or time to think or put down some sort of boundary, he straight up told her time and time again "No". Bro that's not for you to decide! The way he talks about possessing her even though they didn't have a single conversation that could've hinted at them becoming friendly again was also so off-putting. The lack of chemistry or of a build-up that could make me believe in their feelings for one another made every scene where he was talking to himself about binding her to him so gross. He basically has three personality traits: being into football, being a dad, and being possessive and shit. Not exactly the dream man Millie pined over for seventy fucking years.

Third red flag: how about y'all learn how to fucking talk, huh? Wild concept I know. But the whole "I love you so much I'll piss on my professional hopes and dreams and aspirations" was just too much to take seriously at that point. The whole non-fraternization clause is the only thing that kept me going because I wanted to know how the situation would blow up. But I could sense that 1. It'd be unsatisfying because it wouldn't bring forward the necessity to fucking talk to one another about life-altering decisions that implicate both your professional and personal lives and 2. The way it'd be resolved would be extra convenient. And call me a psychic because I fucking called it. Ridiculous.

I'm sure there are more red flags but I think I wasted enough time on this book. While it's not the worse book I've read, it sure is nothing I'd ever recommend to someone ever in my life. Like there's no redeeming quality. I think being "readable" is the bare minimum so I'm not going to dwell on that. But if you want anything of substance like exploring betrayal and how to become friends again, or how to give someone a second chance after they've burned you, or how to reconcile a reawakened old flame with your current goals in life, this book does none of that. Flat, pitiful, and tired.