Rules for Second Chances made me weep. It’s a book which made Maggie North an insta-buy author for me. Talk about emotional swoony second chance love story! I am a sucker for second chances and this is it! Keep reading this author interview with Maggie North with all the questions I couldn’t stop thinking about for Rules for Second Chances.
Rules for Second Chances
Liz Lewis has tried everything to be what people want, but she’s always been labeled different in the boisterous world of wilderness expeditions. Her marriage to popular adventure guide Tobin Renner-Lewis is a sinkhole of toxic positivity where she’s the only one saying no.
When she gets mistaken for a server at her own thirtieth birthday party, Liz vows to stop playing a minor character in her own life. The (incredibly well-researched and scientific) plan? A crash course in confidence . . . via an improv comedy class. The catch? She’s terrible at it, and the only person willing to practice with her is a certain extroverted wilderness guide who seems dead set on saving their marriage.
But as Liz and Tobin get closer again, she’s forced to confront all the reasons they didn’t work the first time, along with her growing suspicion that her social awkwardness might mean something deeper. Liz must learn improv’s most important lesson—“Yes, and”—or she’ll have to choose between the love she always wanted and the dreams that got away.
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Find Rules for Second Chances on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop.org, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.
Interview
I first have to ask about the origin of your story, specifically your choice in both wilderness guides and improv! Did you always know from the first image of this book that’s where you were going? Did you have to do any research into either of these?
I wrote the first draft of RULES FOR SECOND CHANCES in 2021. I’m a doctor in my day job, and my hospital was getting hit pretty hard by delta and omicron. My life had grown very small outside of work. I really wanted to go back to the wilderness of B.C., Canada, where I grew up – so I did, if only through the story. That was the easy part – no research needed! As for improv, I had originally conceived the story as two people doing a marriage rehab manual based on re-enacting scenes from famous romantic movies, but I needed to make the scenes surprising and new. Improv was the perfect solution to make the story go in strange (and hopefully funny) directions. My favorite part of researching improv was interviewing the women of Hot Snack Comedy in Vancouver, B.C.
One of my favorite elements was the family relationships in both families, specifically sisters and mother in laws. Can you tell new readers about these two characters and the evolution of their relationships as the book continues? Were these two the same from the beginning?
Sisters and mothers-in-law: For context, Liz, the main character of RULES, spends a lot of time wishing her distant sister were closer and her chilly mother-in-law – who happens to be her next door neighbor – were further away. For me, Liz’s sister is the character who highlights Liz’s past and helps her understand that when people rejected her as a child, it was because of anti-autistic discrimination. Her mother-in-law is about the future: can Liz learn to value herself according to her own judgment, instead of other people’s opinions? There’s a moment in the book when Liz realizes she has to let go of the past and the future to live in the now (a classic piece of improv wisdom). Her relationships with her sister and MIL go through huge growth around the same time.
I love Liz and was wondering if any draft of your book also had Tobin’s POV? I think it’s interesting how some second chance romances are dual POV and I was wondering. I adored being in Liz’s shoes during the book!
I *love* a good dual POV romance! Unfortunately, when I was writing RULES a dual POV romance of mine was “dying on sub,” meaning it failed to sell to publishers. A couple of the rejection notes from editors were basically “love the female character, hate the male character.” It was really hard on my confidence, so I decided to take a break from writing male POV characters. Then RULES sold and my publisher wanted another similar book set in the same universe (THE RIPPLE EFFECT), so single POV might be my brand for the foreseeable future. It’s so funny and random how these paths unfold.
Did you always know the improv scenes? Were there any that didn’t make it into the book?
At one point I had a list of maybe thirty or forty movie scenes I was thinking about adapting! There were a number of scenes that got cut, including the “you complete me” scene from Jerry Maguire, which my agent felt was too niche. My favorite lost scene was the pottery seduction scene between Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in Ghost. Maybe I’ll release that one as a bonus chapter someday! It gets sexy and also a little ridiculous, which is what RULES is all about.
What was the hardest scene to write – without spoilers – and how did you solve the problem?
For me the most difficult scene in every book is Chapter 1. That chapter has to work so hard. I’m not sure how many times I wrote this one before one of my critique partners said, “Just let us feel Liz.” That turned out to be the magic incantation that unlocked the chapter.
Do you have any other favorite second chance romance recommendations?
Second chance is my favorite trope by far, and I mean far. I love both laughing and crying when I read romance, so of course I’m going to recommend every second chance historical romance by Sherry Thomas. She seriously gives me crushing chest pain when I’m reading her books. I love it. A couple of my favorite contemporary romance authors have second chance titles coming in 2025, including Alexandra Kiley’s SCOT AND BOTHERED and Tarah DeWitt’s LEFT OF FOREVER. Put it in my veins.
My last question is about the next book since I wanted to know about McHuge! Can you tease a bit of what we can expect and how drafting/editing that was while writing or releasing RULES FOR SECOND CHANCES?
Everyone loves McHuge! The most difficult part of writing that book was knowing I needed to give him a really special story, and low key freaking out over whether I could do him justice. In short: sunshiny McHuge and grumpy Stellar, who had a disastrous hookup a year ago, will be working together at McHuge’s hopelessly earnest relationship therapy startup. In my opinion, THE RIPPLE EFFECT is both hornier and sadder than RULES, but they both share that unbreakable sense of hope. To paraphrase one early reviewer, it’s about being afraid that you hold too much pain to be worthy of love, and then being shown in the most gentle, caring way how wrong you are. I hope people love it.
Find Rules for Second Chances on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop.org, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.
About the Author
Maggie North writes deeply emotional, strangely hilarious contemporary romances about introverts at the end of their ropes, STEM, Canada, and other overlooked, underappreciated things you’d love to discover. She enjoys being autistic a lot more since she received her diagnosis as an adult.
Maggie lives in Ottawa, Canada with the man she met in ninth grade, their kid, and a rotating cast of hypoallergenic aquarium friends. Before becoming an author, she went to medical school and trained as an anesthesiologist, medical researcher, and crisis simulation specialist. She now practices anesthesiology part-time and devotes the rest of her hours to happily ever afters. Her books include Rules for Second Chances (2024) and The Ripple Effect (2025).