It Takes Heart by Tif Marcelo
I must start with the admission that stories about second chances at love, especially second chances at first love, are my catnip. It’s my very favorite Romance genre trope. Assuaging the pain of losing the one who got away is the perfect redemptive metaphor for getting a redo on life’s worst mistakes and missteps. Here, the trope says, you can have another chance to be the person you needed to be to hold on to a love that defined you. Here, you can have another chance to know yourself better than you did when you lost something precious because of your ignorance about yourself. In terms of relatability what could be a more universal experience or a more human yearning?
In Tif Marcelo’s It Takes Heart (Montlake) Brandon and Geneva have always been part of each other’s lives. They’re family friends; she’s his big sister’s best friend. There’s very little about each other’s lives that they don’t know when they hook up at his brother’s wedding and then have a brief affair that ends, as intense love affairs often do, with pain and estrangement.
WORKING TOGETHER AFTER YEARS WORKING APART
For four years afterward, they chase their dreams and fight their demons, separately. Hers, in the form of the endless, exhausting work of the ambitious. His, in the form of his grief from having lost his parents too suddenly and feeling disconnected from his close-knit family. Then they find themselves on his family’s resort in the Outer Banks working together to restore and reopen the resort after the devastation from a hurricane.
Yes, the metaphor is thick and visceral, much like the pain that threads through their unexpected reunion and through all the many precariously strained relationships in play. This story is as much a family saga as it is romance.
RELATIONSHIPS RISE TO THE OCCASION
The Puso family of four parentless siblings who struggle to communicate their feelings is rife with drama. Complicated marriages, difficult divorces, the heartbreaking dichotomy of single parenting and side hustles are all being navigated while running the joint family business of a heart-shaped resort designed to bring struggling couples together. The connection between the siblings is strong yet messy, with personalities and birth order roles dodging the heels of every interaction.
But the magic in this story lies in Brandon and Geneva’s connection. Their chemistry is electric. They light up the page every time they’re together. Even at their angriest, they’re gentle with each other and aware of each other’s feelings. Their mutual respect and attraction is never in question, and never was; what has changed is how they feel about the goals and struggles that separated them. In the end, bringing their second chance to fruition is about growing and about growing up, which makes it satisfying and believable. If a romance set in a beautiful place, populated by a cast of endearing characters and featuring a couple of flawed but gentle characters is the escape you need, then you’ll find it at the Puso family’s Heart Resort in It Takes Heart.
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