Annabeth Albert opens her new Second Chance Ranch series with a small-town, second-chance romance between two best friends who reunite after more than twenty years to find that the spark that ignited their youthful love affair has never faded. Want You Back has a lot going for it and I enjoyed reading it, but I’ve read this story many times before and can’t honestly say there’s anything about this one that makes it stand out from the pack.

Maverick Lovelorn and Colt Jennings are best friends despite their very different backgrounds. Maverick’s family founded the town that is named after them and runs the ranch that has been theirs for generations; Colt lives in a small house with his mother and siblings and money is tight, but where Cole is loved and cherished, Maverick’s father is cold and overbearing, seeing him merely as an extension of himself and constantly going on at him about his obligations and responsibilities to the ranch he will one day inherit. The boys bond over losses – Colt’s dad, the town sheriff, was killed in the line, and Maverick’s mother and elder brother died in a plane crash, which has turned his father even colder and harsher towards him. Maverick longs for the kind of warmth shown him by Colt’s family, but which he never receives at home.

His friendship with Colt is the one thing that makes life bearable, and late on Prom night, that friendship turns into something else. Maverick has known he’s gay for a while, but hasn’t told Colt for fear of losing his friendship, and Colt has been worrying about the fact that he doesn’t think about sex all the time like most other boys his age and wondering if there’s something wrong with him. When he and Maverick kiss for the first time, something drops into place, and Colt finally understands what all the fuss is about.

They both know it can’t last, though. Colt knows how miserable Maverick is in Lovelorn, and his friend has never made a secret of the fact that he’ll be out of there as soon as he can. His dad expects him to go to university in Colorado, but Maverick is off to ULCA, and although it will devastate Colt to let him go, he encourages it, knowing Maverick will never be happy if he stays.

More than two decades later, Colt, now the town sheriff himself, pulls over a driver doing way over the speed limit, and is shocked to see Maverick at the wheel. He knows that old man Lovelorn has recently passed away, but still didn’t expect that would prompt Maverick to return to the place he’d been so desperate to get away from. But here he is, looking as handsome as ever as he tells Colt he won’t be around for long and that he and his sister, Faith, have only come to the ranch to make arrangements to sell it.

Which, it turns out, they can’t do for a year, owing to a clause in their father’s will. Furious, Faith immediately sets out to find a lawyer who can find a way for them to sell quickly, whilst Maverick, who doesn’t really want to stick around either, decides that perhaps spending some time in Lovelorn might not be that bad after all. The attraction he and Colt felt for each other all those years ago is as strong as ever, so maybe they can take advantage of the situation and take some time to explore it properly.

Want You Back is a low-angst, feel-good romance featuring engaging characters who behave like the mature adults they are and know how to have difficult conversations. There are no ridiculous misunderstandings and they communicate openly about past disappointments and future hopes, discuss their expectations, own their fears and allow themselves to be vulnerable to one another. Both men have to decide whether the risk of being hurt again is worth a second chance at love, and while there’s a bit of uncertainty surrouding Colt’s belief that Maverick isn’t going to stick around for good, I liked watching him work through those worries and coming to believe Maverick means what he says.

On the downside, this is so much a low-stakes story as to be an almost no-stakes one. I liked that Colt and Maverick moved on with their lives after Maverick left and that they aren’t holding any grudges over the way things ended between them, and I liked watching them learning about each other’s lives as they are in the present. But while there’s a bit of external drama around something that happens to Faith later in the book, there’s no question mark over whether Maverick will stay or not, and thus no real tension in the story.

As always in Annabeth Albert’s books, the characters are well-drawn and relatable, and I appreciated the pertinent commentary about small-town economics, about what would happen to Lovelorn should the ranch be sold or closed. The two teenaged girls – Colt’s daughter, Willow, and Maverick’s niece, Hannah – are real teenagers with clearly defined personalities rather than plot-moppets, and they play an important part in the story but don’t overwhelm it. It can be hard to like Faith, who is often headstrong and selfish, but she has demons of her own to fight, and Grayson, the ranch’s quietly competent foreman, is on hand to steer Maverick in the right direction.

This has been a difficult book to rate, because I’m a big fan of Annabeth Albert’s and it always pains me to assign a low-ish grade to a book by an author I like, but Want You Back just didn’t hit the spot for me. It has a lot going for it – mature communication, warm, friendly vibes and engaging characters – but overall, it was just too bland for my taste. I freely admit this is probably a case of ‘it’s me, not the book’ though, and I’d imagine that anyone searching for a sexy, low-stress romance will enjoy it.