Okay so I wasn’t expecting this one to get to me the way it did.
A Second Chance is YA fiction about two best friends — Mikaila and Chara — and the slow, quiet campaign one person runs to break that friendship apart. Asa isn’t dramatic about it. He doesn’t blow anything up. He just works. Steadily. And Asher Frend tracks it so carefully that you start feeling uneasy pages before Mikaila does. That line — “I realized he didn’t like me. He liked the control he had over me.” — I wrote it down.
Set in beach towns in Maryland and Connecticut. Multiple POVs. Dated chapters that create a slow build. Mikaila is a great narrator because she’s genuinely strong — spirited, competitive — which makes the manipulation more unsettling to watch, not less.
There’s a faith thread woven through it that I want to flag for people who either love that or are suspicious of it: it’s handled well. It’s not preachy. It’s just part of who these characters are and how they move through hard things. The father-daughter storylines add more emotional texture than I expected.
This is clean YA. No content warnings needed. It ends with real hope that it actually earns, which is harder to do than it sounds.
The US Review of Books recommends it. It’s also won the Literary Titan Silver Award, Christian Books Excellence Award, and Christ Lit Award, and it’s an Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist — independently published, and rightfully recognized.
If you’ve been sleeping on indie YA, this is a good place to wake up.
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.