If you’ve ever needed a story that holds space for how hard it is to trust yourself again after someone’s spent time making you doubt your own perceptions — this one is for you.
A Second Chance is a YA novel about two best friends, Mikaila and Chara, and the slow fracture that opens between them when Asa enters their world. He’s not a cartoon villain. He’s careful. Polite. Strategic. Frend tells the story from multiple perspectives — primarily through Mikaila’s competitive, spirited first-person voice — and structures it with dated chapters that create a slow build of dread you feel before you can name it. “I realized he didn’t like me. He liked the control he had over me.” That’s the book’s center. Everything else orbits it.
Set in Maryland and Connecticut beach towns, the story uses its bright, open settings as counterweight to what’s happening emotionally. The contrast isn’t labored — it’s just there, the way real life often is: the world looking beautiful on the outside while something quietly breaks.
What Asher Frend does particularly well is write characters who carry their faith like a quiet resource rather than a performance. It shapes how they respond to pressure without becoming the book’s thesis statement. The parallel father-daughter storylines give the novel unexpected depth, expanding what “second chance” means beyond just the central friendship.
This is a story about what gets taken from you without your permission, and the longer, harder work of getting it back. It doesn’t arrive at hope cheaply. It earns it.
The US Review of Books recommends it. It’s also earned the Literary Titan Silver Award, Christian Books Excellence Award, Christ Lit Award, and an Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist nod — all deserved.
Every reader deserves a story that sees them. This one does.
Get your copy: A Second Chance on Amazon
What reviewers are saying:
“I realized he didn’t like me. He liked the control he had over me.” — US Review of Books
About Asher Frend
ASHER FREND writes clean young adult fiction with a thread of faith, a sharp edge of suspense, and characters who are trying to do the right thing when it would be easier to walk away. Their stories blend coming-of-age pressure with real emotional stakes, then build toward hope without pretending life is simple. When Asher is not writing, they are usually spending time with their spouse and son and getting out for long walks to clear their head and untangle the next plot problem.