The Art of Starting Over

4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars | 4,897 ratings

Price: 1.99

Last update: 01-31-2025


About this item

In this journey from first love to second chances, New York Times bestselling author Heidi McLaughlin brings a single mom and a widower back home to renew the spark that will light their way forward.

Devorah Campbell’s life falls apart under the pressure of one truth: her husband is having an affair with her best friend. So Devorah packs up her daughter and their shared heartbreak for small-town Oyster Bay, where she grew up. Her relationship with her father is still on the rocks, but Devorah has her brother there—and, unexpectedly, her brother’s best friend.

Hayden McKenna lost his wife a year ago and has struggled with single fatherhood ever since. Moving back home with his son is a last but best resort, a chance to start fresh, surrounded by family and old friends. But when Hayden runs into Devorah, his childhood crush, sparks fly as bright as ever. If only he could make her see them too…

Amid a swirl of hurt and healing, Devorah and Hayden grow closer, rekindling what they had all those years ago to discover that, sometimes, a new start means going back to the beginning.


From the Publisher

Sometimes a new start is right where you left it. Included with Kindle Unlimited

Top reviews from the United States

  • Kindle Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it!
    Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2025
    Ms. McLaughlin is a new author for me and I absolutely loved this book! The story encompasses all the emotion of first love, heartache, loss, betrayal, second chances and finding love again. She tells the story very well! This book is a great summer or anytime read, and I highly recommend it.
  • Nadirah
    4.0 out of 5 stars a beautiful tragedy
    Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2025
    This story was beautiful in its entirety. As someone who went through a similar situation as Dev, and then finding the love of my life in the end hit home.
  • Trudy D
    5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, emotional, second chance romance
    Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2025
    Sometimes writing a review is extremely challenging. This is not one of those times. The challenge this time is to not gush too much or give away some of the amazing plot. How do I get across how entertaining this story is? How do I express what a great escape it was? I tell you that I will be reading this story again and again. I tell you that I will buy the audiobook and listen to it. The story is a great reminder that things can go wrong, that hope maybe difficult to believe, but you can find or make your own happily ever after.

    The Art of Starting Over is an very emotional read. I am still at risk of a book coma. At times my heart was breaking. I couldn't stop thinking about Maren. What she went through just felt so real. The teacher in me wanted to take her aside and just let her vent. Thankfully the author created a support group that I would like to adopt. It was the unexpected protectors that took the book to the next level.

    The characters have stayed with me. The residents of the small town of Oyster bay are a hoot for the most of part. Their drama kept me entertained for hours. The Crafty Cathys (what some would call busy bodies) are an eclectic group. They helped make Devorah's escape back to the smally town of Oyster Bay a little bit easier. After what she has been through she needs all the help she can get. She needs a second chance at a new beginning.

    Not all second chances deal with a couple that lost their way. Devorah does get a second chance with Hayden, her sort of high school boy friend. More importantly, at least to me, was Devorah's second chance with her dad. Grab the tissues, the struggle will eat at your heart. At the end of the story, I was reminded it anything is possible. You just have to open up your heart.

    01/01/25 My official first read of the new year. Just as fantastic as the first time I read it.
  • Crystal Wilson
    3.0 out of 5 stars Cute Story
    Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2025
    This story was cute but it was a little all over the place. One point it said she was sitting on the porch drinking liquor but then later in the story said she never drank anything but water and soda. I’m not a big fan of writing from third person perspective but then labeling each chapter with the MMC or FMC’s name.
  • PS
    5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful
    Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2025
    Loved this book! I love an easy read with a happy ending. Emotional and relatable.
  • Janet Hammons
    5.0 out of 5 stars 5 stars
    Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2025
    An amazingly emotional journey. Devorah had her heart ripped out by her husband and best friend. Hayden lost his wife to a drunk driver. But before all that Hayden was Devorah's older brothers best friend and he and Devorah have a history. Both are now single parents and both now know what they missed out on the first time arojnd. Single parent, small-town, brothers best friend, second chance. Love it all and all the characters.
  • Sgh
    4.0 out of 5 stars second chance at love
    Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2025
    After losing their spouses, they return with their one child to their small town to live temporarily with their parents and find a second chance at love.
  • The Evills
    5.0 out of 5 stars ignore the blurb
    Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2025
    Be aware, first and foremost, that the blurb for this book has some details about the story wrong. Fun enough, the inaccurate details had me ranting to a friend about how much I hated some of these tropes romance novels. I couldn’t answer some of her questions about the story, so I did what anyone would, and I started to read the sample provided. This answered some of the questions, but not all… And to my surprise/horror, I discovered that the writing was excellent. The story was compelling. I kind of wanted to know what happened next. It’s a good thing we had two books this month for First Reads!

    Loosely, the plot is simple: Devorah and her daughter Maren moved back to her childhood home of Oyster Bay after Devorah discovers that her husband is having an affair with her best friend, who is also the mother of her daughter’s best friend. And Devorah finds out in perhaps the worst way: a social media post, because the best friend doesn’t know that Devorah is following her. At the same time, Hayden moves home six months after his wife’s funeral. Quite simply, he needs help raising his son, Conor, and he can’t bear to be around his in-laws for reasons I will leave you to discover. And wouldn’t you know it, Maren and Conor are the same age — and Devorah and Hayden have a past.

    That past is told us via flashbacks through the book and those are never awkward or out of place. They instead add context to the story that would be awkward to learn otherwise.

    As for the story itself… This is a romance novel in that there is a pair of main characters who have a romantic history together and spend time thinking about whether they want one going forward. But I wouldn’t say that it is the main plot of the book so much as it’s the reason this book is going to be filed under romance and not general fiction or women’s literature or anything like that. What is the main plot of this book is Devorah repairing and renewing relationships with family and friends, after being isolated and removed from them by her soon to be ex-husband. This process that she describes, and some of the belittling that she talks about, will be familiar to some readers as a form of abuse, and that should be noted in case that’s the sort of thing people want to avoid. In particular, I found the process of her repairing her relationship with her father to be something that moved me to tears multiple times, probably because of some wish fulfillment issues in my own life.

    I have two main critiques of this book, as much as I did like it. One: Hayden as a character/protagonist does not change. Who Hayden is at the beginning of the book is who Hayden is at the end of the book. I think we are supposed to see that there is some change in him, but it doesn’t really work because the change that happened is the change that happens to pretty much any young man as he moves from being a teenager to an adult. And more importantly, that change happened off the page long before we the reader join the story. Two: I really hate the trope of death as a plot point to move the story along, and unfortunately that does happen here. I don’t think there was any particular reason for it other than perhaps the writer writing her way into a corner and I just don’t find that a good enough reason for it to exist. I think that the story could’ve achieved everything it wanted to without having a needless death thrown in.

    It is the strength of characterization and writing that means that these two complaints can’t dim the five stars this story deserves.

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