Review: A Most Refreshing Addition to Women's Literature
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 20, 2013
McCoy has created a most refreshing addition to women's literature with this anthology featuring second chances, love, and loss.In this sharp collection, McCoy has created two engaging stories of second chances. The first story, Second Chance Sister, chronicles 20-year-old Ashley, and her coming of age story.  Ashley's mother, Rachael, shares both her displeasure and pleasure in her daughter's wish to become engaged to Neal Markham, a successful man five years Ashley's senior.  Naturally, her mother and sister believe she is too young, but Ashley is confident in her ability to make her own decisions. Much like any 20-year-old, Ashley changes her mind quickly when she meets Brandon, a captivating young man with an engaging personality; the opposite of Neal. Ashley chooses to marry Brandon, despite her mother's lack of support.  Then, for a while, it feels as if her life is spinning out of control.  With an unwanted child on the way, money in short supply, and pressure to become the sole breadwinner of the family--Ashley is miserable.  She gets a little help from an idea and summerwear.com and is miraculously able to turn her life around for the better--but will she remain happy?  The second story, Online Dating: a Memoir, gives a detailed account of Peyton's online dates.  As the son of an ambitious, accomplished man, and an absent mother that, after his father's suicide, gave herself over to "God and the bottle"; Peyton falls into a darkness that he doesn't even realize he must overcome.  With his own feelings of inadequacy, Peyton believes most of the women he has met online are beneath him.  Pool-of-singles.com introduces Peyton to Adrienne, a rather erratic and eclectic woman; Mildred, a messy, deranged woman in need of money, fast; and the beautiful Amanda, who appears to be "genuine and interesting."  Although his dates seem quirky to say the least--he finds something he didn't expect. And not a wife or girlfriend--rather something deeper and rooted in religion; a subject he had once turned his back on.Lucid and intelligent.  Second Chance Sister delves deeply into the most natural of emotions and the most wrenching of choices; each event detailing twists of fate and turns with grace.