Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

 

When Linda Holmes announced she was publishing a romance novel on Pop Culture Happy Hour, my very beloved podcast, I admit to being skeptical. Critics taking on a new role and creating something doesn't always work well (consider Nick Quah's podcast Servant of Pod, which was good in theory since Quah is basically the expert reporter on podcasting as an industry, but turned out to be incredibly boring in practice).  Anyway, I kept putting off reading Evvie Drake Starts Over because I just wasn't sure if Holmes had the chops. But then the whole new library card, had to start all my holds all over again thing happened and this book was available to read right away, so here we are.

Evvie's abusive husband dies just as she's about to leave him. No one knows he was a jerk, though, so she's grieving, but struggling with not feeling more grief.  Meanwhile, Dean Tenney was a successful baseball pitcher who had to retire after struggling in his career. He moves into her house for a bit and they start to fall in love.  

Interesting characters: I think this is the weakest area of the book.  Evvie and Dean are not particularly well developed. It's written from Evvie's perspective, so I guess I'm okay with no flashbacks of Dean trying to deal with his turmoil. But Evvie is flat.  We do get some flashbacks of Evvie's jerk husband, but her inner monologue is flat. She cries and describes the crying in detail, but her feelings are superficial and it's hard to know what's going on in her brain at any given time.

Believable conflict: This is what Holmes did right. The conflict here isn't in the fact that these two don't communicate or that they shouldn't be together in the first place or that they are a couple that bicker.  The conflict is that they are adults dealing with life and their life plans aren't in alignment. They care about each other, but they also need to get their individual lives fixed before they can put their lives together. The absolute honesty of the conflict here was mature, realistic, and hit it out of the ballpark (pun absolutely intended) for me. 

Emotional tension: I thought Holmes did a much better job with the main couple here than the peripheral characters. Evvie's relationship with her best friend was so confusing to me. I just didn't understand so many of their interactions.  But I really wanted these two to be together and I was not certain if it would happen at the end because they were in such different places in their lives, emotionally and physically.  Very well done.

Happily ever after: I do think these two kids will make it. I really do. Sometimes I read the ending of a book and I'm sitting over here predicting they'll break up or get divorced within five years, but I believe these two (absolutely fictional) characters have what it takes to have a relationship with the good, the bad, and the quirky fights over whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher. Holmes took the time develop the romance, the physical attraction, and the communication. She did the work and I finished the book feeling optimistic and happy and what else could you possibly want from a romance novel?  

So there you go. I really liked this book. I think it avoided a lot of romance tropes that drive me insane. There's a dog. There's a slow-burn. There are adults acting like adults.  It's a good representative of its genre and if you're a romance fan, don't hesitate like I did. Read it.