"Stop trying to take the blame for what happened. Stop trying to make up for it, and just be yourself. Live your life and be happy." (Brittney)
In Finding Chase, Chase Walker is still trying to cope with the events of Chasing Nikki.
Chase's personality jumps off the page. He's a good guy, but he is also is witty, hilarious and confident. He is grieving for Nikki, struggling to keep the promise that he made to her and isn't willing to let anyone get that close to him again. Chase's thoughts and emotions when it comes to dealing with his grief is heartbreaking and believable. However, his grief is too overwhelming and too much at times.
Chase might not want to date again, but he can't help but be attracted to Brittney, one of his best friends. She's easy to talk to and makes him feel like himself. I really liked Brittney as a character, more than I liked Nikki. Brittney is extremely direct about who she is and what she wants from life and the directness and maturity that she and Chase has when it comes to their relationship is extremely refreshing. There's no beating around the bush, hiding emotions and feelings or miscommunication and I was invested in their relationship.
Even although Chase and Brittney's relationship develop from a friendship and spans over months, their romance developed far too quickly for my liking and felt "insta-lovey", even although it wasn't. This is the same problem that I had with the romance in Chasing Nikki.
Finding Chase doesn't brush the events of the previous book aside and I loved that it still showed how important Nikki was to Chase and the impact that Nikki had in his life. The epilogue showed that this book, might be about healing and second chances, but it's also not forgetting about the people who have made an impact in one's life.
However, the plot of Finding Chase felt repetitive when compared to Chasing Nikki. In both Chasing Nikki and Finding Chase, Chase has to deal with the grief of the loss of his father and Nikki, moving to a new environment, finding romance, playing football and a car accident..
Finding Chase is also set in a college environment, but Chase only went to one class in this book and I never saw him stressing about homework and assignments. I did get the feeling that most of it occurs off-page and the book focuses more on the romance. Football also plays an important role in this book and in Chase's life and I liked reading about it.
Finding Chase is a book about romance, grief, living and second chances, but what I found the most interesting was that a lot of Chasing Nikki and Finding Chase is drawn from Lacey Weatherford's personal experiences and I can't imagine the courage and bravery that it took to revisit painful memories and write this book. She's definitely one brave woman!