Rock star romances aren’t books I actively seek out, but when I saw Kaje Harper had a new release coming out in the Road to Rocktoberfest series (a multi author endeavour that adds new books every October), I decided to give it a go. Missing Chord is a charming, tender and thoughtful second chance love story about two men who met at the wrong time rediscovering each other and deciding whether a second shot at love is worth taking.

When singer-songwriter Griffin Marsh returned home to Iowa to sort through his late mother’s belongings, he had no idea that his life would change so massively. He took his eye off the road for a second to look at his phone, hit another car and ran it off the road and down a bank, killing the driver. He’s a decent man who did a stupid thing, and he’s genuinely remorseful, using the bulk of his savings to set up a six-figure trust fund for the driver’s family. When the book begins, he’s being sentenced to two years’ probation and five hundred hours of community service to be undertaken at one or more long-term rehabilitation and nursing homes. After fighting through the crowd of reporters outside the courtroom he heads back to his apartment, where he does the one thing that’s always settled and calmed him; gets out his guitar and starts to play.

Former ER nurse Lee Robertson is now nursing supervisor at the Wellhaven nursing home, and while he loves his job, it’s frequently exhausting and doesn’t leave a lot of room for a personal life. Not that Lee has one of those anyway. On this particular day, he’s heading back to his office when he hears music coming from the common room and recognises the song as an oldie by Griffin Marsh. He’s momentarily transported back twenty years to the night Griffin wrote it, but continues on his way – stopping to look in a few minutes later, thinking to see an old concert of Griffin’s playing on the TV. But it’s not the television. Griffin Marsh is sitting by the piano, playing his guitar and singing for an audience of residents. When Griffin looks up – clearly shocked to see him – Lee immediately ducks out and away, wondering what on earth the Griffin Marsh is doing entertaining patients in a nursing home.

The author seeds Griffin and Lee’s backstory through the first few chapters, and we learn that they’d first met twenty years before, when Griffin, then thirty-six, had been a jobbing musician and Lee was a shy, twinkish twenty-year-old at nursing school. They’d been together for three months when Griffin finally got the big break he’d been hoping for, breaking Lee’s heart when he left him to pursue the bright lights of fame and fortune. For Griffin, it was the right decision; he didn’t exactly hit the big time, but he’s had a good, solid career for twenty years – although he never found someone he connected with on the same level as he had with Lee, who remains Griffin’s biggest regret.

Missing Chord is a quiet book and a beautifully written romance between two men who have lived very different lives and who need to work out whether there’s something still between them worth fighting for. Lee had a lot on his plate when Griffin left – his sister had just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and his mother was struggling with guilt because it was a genetic condition – and it took Lee a long time to let go of his anger at Griffin walking away when he needed him most. In fact, seeing Griffin again brings some of it back, and I liked that Lee finally gets the chance to voice it and doesn’t shy away from telling Griffin exactly how he felt.

Lee and Griffin come off as real people with real problems and insecurities. They have a lot to work through and Lee, who has experienced a lot of loss in his life, needs to overcome his mistrust that Griffin is here to stay this time. Griffin is adamant that he’s given up touring as part of his plan to wind-down his career and focus more on writing and recording, but when his commitment to attend Rocktoberfest to open for a group he mentored means postponing something important, Lee fears it means he’s not serious about sticking around and that Griffin is once more putting his career ahead of anything else in his life.

I enjoyed watching Lee and Griffin confronting their past mistakes and working to re-build their relationship on a more solid foundation. With a strong secondary cast and realistic conflicts between the characters and the world at large, Missing Chord is a lovely and ultimately uplifting story about love, forgiveness and starting over, and I’m happy to recommend it.