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Welcome to the Blog Tour for A Second Chance to Remember
by Leslie Gould, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!
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About the Book
Title: A Second Chance to Remember
Series: Letters from Lancaster County
Author: Leslie Gould
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Release Date: November 17, 2026
Genre: Contemporary Amish Romance
From bestselling author Leslie Gould comes a warm and lighthearted Amish romance where an unlikely correspondence opens the door to a second chance at love.
After losing her beloved husband, Grace Conley is certain her heart will never heal. The Mennonite mother of three pours herself into raising her children, managing her Ohio farm, tending her late husband's beehives, and fostering her small honey business. Romance feels like a chapter ended--until a letter arrives that changes everything.
Through her husband's old beekeepers' circle letter, Grace connects with Michael Stoll, an Amish widower from Lancaster County she's never met. His words mirror her own grief, and their phone conversations become the highlight of her week. Michael's quiet strength and devotion to his three children stir something that Grace thought she'd buried forever. But doubts creep in about their religious differences and lingering grief. Will a leap of faith help Grace and Michael discover that love can come twice in a lifetime?
"Gould expertly builds the relationship between her leads, blending gently comedic moments with emotional depth. . . . This charms."--Publishers Weekly on The Shop Down the Lane
A sweet second chance romance and perfect book club pick for fans of Beverly Lewis, Wanda Brunstetter, Amy Clipston, Beth Wiseman, and Amish fiction with big-hearted widowed and single parent characters set in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
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EXCERPT:
Grace started reading the beekeeping circle letter, which Simon had belonged to. When he was a child, he watched a bee documentary at an Englisch neighbor’s house and had wanted to become a beekeeper ever since. As a young adult, after he left the Amish, he’d worked for a beekeeper and purchased a few backyard hives and colonies over the years. After they married, he was able to make his childhood dream come true and become an actual beekeeper. Grace was trying her best to keep the colonies alive and the hives functioning.
The circle letter members were a mix of hobbyists, those who sold honey to distributors, and commercial beekeepers who rented their colonies and hives out as pollinators. Grace skimmed the letters, which had taken only six weeks to come around to her. These people took their beekeeping and corresponding seriously, sharing mite remedies, information on replacement queens, and when it was necessary to let nature take its course instead of interfering, even if that meant losing a colony.
Grace had simply mailed the first packet that arrived after Simon passed to the next member. When the second packet arrived two months later, she managed to write that he’d died in an accident during the January ice storm that had hit central Ohio. At the time, a nearby beekeeper had trucked Simon’s hives to pollinate cherry orchards in Michigan so they were out of sight, out of mind, and one less thing she needed to worry about. She sent the next circle letter on without adding to it, and then delayed the next packet by a month, intending to write. When she realized she wasn’t actually going to get anything on paper—s he was eight months pregnant at the time—she sent it on again without a contribution. In the months that followed, she’d managed to write twice, asking what had turned out to be silly questions. People were nice but honest. She was pretty sure she should drop out before she got kicked out.
She shoved everything back into the bee envelope, took a drink of tea, and opened the grief packet. Rachel was at least fifty-five, and Grace expected the letter writers to be as old or older. But they weren’t, at least not all of them. All of the letters included biographical information at the top of the letter— where the writers lived, if they had children and their ages, when their spouses had passed away, and when they’d joined the group. She was beginning to think the circle letter doubled as a matchmaking device.
She kept reading. There was a man with three children, and in the biographical information at the top of his letter, he listed his oldest as twenty-o ne and married, the middle child as twenty, and the youngest as thirteen. He wrote that he was forty-two. His wife had died after a long illness. Michael Stoll. That name sounded familiar, but then again,almost all Mennonite and Amish names sounded familiar. She and Simon both had huge extended families and umpteen cousins, although their immediate families were small. Grace was an only child, while Simon had three stepsiblings.
But she wasn’t related to any Stolls. She didn’t think Simon had been either.
Michael Stoll. She was sure there was someone in the beekeeping letter with the same name. She referred back to it. Yes, Michael Stoll with a Red Maple Lane, Quarryville, Pennsylvania address. She remembered because she had an aunt, her mother’s oldest sister, and uncle who lived nearby. She flipped back to the grief group letter. The addresses were the same and so was the neat, easy- to- read cursive.
Grace put the letters in her lap. She couldn’t remember specific letters from Michael Stoll to the other beekeepers. She went back and found the latest one. She started to skim his letter. It was about his spring tasks—c hecking for queens and eggs, feeding the colony a pollen substitute, and treating for mites. Her eyes grew heavy as she read. The caffeine in the tea hadn’t kicked in yet.
She needed to put the letter down and get up and get busy. Start supper. Help Annie with her homework. Why did they give kindergarteners worksheets to bring home? Bathe the baby. Read to Jodi. It seemed her middle child was always getting short shrift.
A Second Chance to Remember
• Leslie Gould
Bethany House,
a division of Baker Publishing Group © 2026 used by permission
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MY REVIEW:
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A powerful story about moving forward after tragedy and through deep grief . . .
Grace Conley is a widow raising her three young children after her husband's sudden and unexpected death a year earlier. She is Mennonite and is stretched thin overseeing her Ohio farm while trying to manage her husband's beehives and bring in some income from selling honey.
Michael Stoll is an Amish widower who lives in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He and his three children—two adult sons and a young teen daughter—miss the strong and loving presence of dear wife and mother, Saloma, who passed away a couple of years before the story begins.
Grace establishes a connection with Michael through a beekeepers' circle letter group she continued to participate in after her husband Simon's death. When one of Michael's adult children needs time to heal from some bad decisions, Michael's relationship with Grace solidifies as she offers her friendship, support, and a job to the adult child.
I appreciate that this author faces tough, real-life issues such as addiction, grief, and inter-faith relationships in a no-nonsense, respectful way.
As I mentioned in my previous review of Book Two in this series, 'When They Met Again,' I enjoy stories written in the epistolary style. This book features many letters between a variety of characters in the book giving readers a different perspective into what the characters are thinking and feeling versus using dialogue.
This book is completely clean in language and content. I especially enjoyed the strong faith thread. The main characters keep their focus on the Lord's teachings and His will and on how their decisions and actions affect their children.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher through JustRead Publicity Tours. All of my thoughts and opinions shared here are solely my own.
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PURCHASE LINKS: Goodreads | Baker Publishing Group | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | ChristianBook | Bookshop | BookBub
More in This Series
About the Author
Leslie Gould is a Christy Award-winning and #1 bestselling author of more than fifty novels, including multiple Amish fiction series. She holds a bachelor's degree in history and an MFA in creative writing. She enjoys church history, research trips, and hiking in the Pacific Northwest. She and her husband live in Portland, Oregon, and have four adult children and two grandchildren. Learn more at LeslieGould.com.
Tour Giveaway
(1) winner will receive a $25 Bookshop.org gift card and a print copy of each book in the series: The Shop Down the Lane, When They Met Again, and A Second Chance to Remember!
Full tour schedule linked below. The giveaway begins at midnight November 9, 2026 and will last through 11:59 PM EST on November 16, 2026. Winners will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.
Giveaway is subject to JustRead Publicity Tours Giveaway Policies.
Follow along at JustRead Tours for a full list of stops!
