NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today • “Everything a romantic comedy should be: witty, relatable, and a little complicated.”—PeopleA heartfelt debut about the unlikely relationship between a young woman who’s lost her husband and a major league pitcher who’s lost his game.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, … THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR
In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth “Evvie” Drake rarely leaves her large, painfully empty house nearly a year after her husband’s death in a car crash. Everyone in town, even her best friend, Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside, and Evvie doesn’t correct them.
Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher and Andy’s childhood best friend, is wrestling with what miserable athletes living out their worst nightmares call the “yips”: he can’t throw straight anymore, and, even worse, he can’t figure out why. As the media storm heats up, an invitation from Andy to stay in Maine seems like the perfect chance to hit the reset button on Dean’s future.
When he moves into an apartment at the back of Evvie’s house, the two make a deal: Dean won’t ask about Evvie’s late husband, and Evvie won’t ask about Dean’s baseball career. Rules, though, have a funny way of being broken—and what starts as an unexpected friendship soon turns into something more. To move forward, Evvie and Dean will have to reckon with their pasts—the friendships they’ve damaged, the secrets they’ve kept—but in life, as in baseball, there’s always a chance—up until the last out.
A joyful, hilarious, and hope-filled debut, Evvie Drake Starts Over will have you cheering for the two most unlikely comebacks of the year—and will leave you wanting more from Linda Holmes.
Praise for Evvie Drake Starts Over
“A quirky, sweet, and splendid story of a woman coming into her own.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six
“Effortlessly enjoyable . . . [a] pitch-perfect . . . adult love story that is as romantic as it is real.”–USA Today
“Charming, hopeful, and gently romantic . . . Evvie Drake is great company.”—Rainbow Rowell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor & Park
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This book is a lovely story of life and how, if you work at it, you can find a second chance at happiness. What makes this book charming is there are multiple characters working for their chance.
Could not put this down–don’t start it late at night!
It’s about real people, in the real world, who fall in love. Who struggle and hurt and care. Their problems are real problems and they approach them like real people.
It’s heartfelt and lovely and genuinely funny in many places. I hope to see more like it from Linda Holmes.
I know better, but I grabbed this book because I liked the cover. Lucky for me, the writing was exactly the style I like, so it turned out to be a fun, I-can’t-wait-to-read-it-again book.
While it’s always fun to slip into the fantasy of romance with a perfect hero, it’s also fun to see not-so-perfect people work things out, and that’s exactly what Evvie and Dean are — not so perfect. They both have to overcome a lot (including issues they aren’t even aware that they have), and it’s heartwarming to see how they do that.
Their relationship (especially their banter) is so easy and fun, that it’s hard not to like them both (for me, anyway — they have just the right amount of sarcasm and not-too-seriousness). And Andy — what a great best-friend story line.
For me, the characters were all relatable in some way, and their struggles were understandable. I loved reading about them and especially enjoyed the ending. I hope Holmes writes another novel; I’d love to read it.
Rated PG-13/R for language and thematic elements.
Holmes nails the slow burn.
Evvie Drake Starts Over was just the book I needed to read while being isolated during the Covid-19 pandemic. Funny, breezy, charming and gently romantic, Linda Holmes’ endearing characters were a delight to follow as they struggled with their very human challenges and disappointments. Evvie, the lead character, tries hard to fix the people she loves but can’t fix herself. Her eventual love interest, Dean, is also broken and the two of them intersect in a way that helps them examine their wounds but ultimately they both realize they must first each find their own new paths. This is a story about the hope of creating second chances and an uplifting tale about friendship, family, and the complications of relationships.
Great chick flick, easy read
Ithey are from Western Maine who stayed in touch as their lives spread out over more then forty years.from Western Maine for Fred to H. Ross Perot, Lamar Hunt and the Dallas Tornado Soccer Team.. Fredi has been a good friend for overe 40 years. During those years we have run over 100,000 miles iincluding a number of marathons. That is when you realy get to know a person.
I had heard good things about this book and saw that it was on a lot of must read lists and decided to give it a try. It is a fast, light read that kept me interested. Evvie Drake has lived in the same town all her life and is recently widowed. She feels like all of the people in town are watching her and judging her on her grief. She is having trouble moving on and has a lot of emotional baggage that she keeps to herself, even though she has good friends and family close by. She agrees to rent the apartment attached to her house to her best friend Andy’s friend, Dean, a major league baseball player that needs a quiet place to escape the limelight. An unlikely friendship develops and we see how they are able to help each other through life’s challenges. Overall this is a story with flawed characters, much like real life, and will keep the reader entertained.
I loved this book
A great story about 2nd chances, “Evvie Drake Starts Over” is a fun and heart felt read. The dialogue makes for easy reading at a steady pace. I enjoyed reading about Evvie’s journey as she stumbles through her life (maybe because I felt a simpatico with her).
The subtlety I really appreciated from this story is “choice not made”. I think we go through life crediting the decisions we make for where we are, but the choices not made have in some essence helped to make (us) and get us to where we are as well. Hence the choices we don’t make can change the course of things in our lives and thought Evvie’s story was a wonderful example of it.
While I can’t say the ending took me by surprise the course it took to get there was not what I expected and thus an enjoyable surprise.
All in all a good read and an easy recommendation for anyone looking for a fun heartwarming “pick me up”.
Most of the romance type books I have read are lacking in the humor department. This one made me smile and chuckle several times, even though there were some serious topics explored in the story.
The characters were well developed and very relatable. I enjoyed the relationships Evvie had with others as she went on her journey of self -discovery. I would love to see this made into a movie!
I definitely recommend this book!
This book was very predictable. Not my cup of tea.
Do not be fooled by the cover and book description. This is not the lighthearted rom-com you would expect.
A twist of fate gives Evvie exactly what she wants – a chance to start over. Armed with a quirky best friend and a famous athlete trying to get away from the spotlight, Evvie starts her journey of reinvention.
The story started out with lots of promise, but took a sharp turn into something fairly dreary and boring. The plot was a poor mixture of rom-com/soap opera drama. Evvie’s constant “oh, woe is me” angst became almost nauseating. But I slogged on, thinking the story would get better. It did not.
The high point of this novel was the end.
This novel was character driven. The two main characters were realistic and were not perfect. The ending seems happy, but it leaves the reader knowing that things can and may happen to change this relationship or any relationship.
Baseball, romance, Maine…all good things!
I liked it! It was wonderful. I liked the characters and the wistfulness and the funnies. It was fabulously tragic and hopeful and stricken, yet with just enough steps into a new journey. I was looking for books about a transcriber, 1, because I had never read a book with one, and 2, because I am one. Little did I know this would be such a popular book, and look at little old me with my turn at getting to have my hands on it. It was a cozy book, too, and I would love to go to Maine. And the applesauce and rice…that’s the perfect explanation of how and episode can go. Change mine to cottage cheese and noodles but yep.
Oh and I also wrote these down in my Keepers book:
And when something terrible happens, we’ll just figure it out.
When she started to cry, the upside was as it always was: the shower cry takes the logistics out of it. Crying has to be dealt with – it makes a mess, it swells up your face, and creates a little pile of tissues that are a tell. But the shower cry is the superspy’s cry, Evie had always thought. It was between you and the tile walls, and everything that hurt turned into water, and the water went away.
And I also think if you liked this book, you might like Gravity is the Thing.
Evvie Drake Starts Over combines loss of identity due to job loss with guilt when the expectations of others can’t be met. Sometimes being forced to start over can be the best thing to happen for personal growth. Though the topics sound sad, there are funny and witty scenes in the book as the main characters struggle to start over.
This is not an ordinary romance novel, in fact it may not be classified as such. Nevertheless, there is an unlikely romance and a satisfying ending.
Second Chances
Evvie and Dean are both at crossroads in their lives that no one can really understand, and not even themselves if they’re being honest, but somehow they understand each other perfectly.
As the title indicates, this is a story of starting over and second chances. I really liked the character development and relationship building that took places early on allowing for an excellent flow of not only story but growth, progress, and change. I also loved the exploration of friendship and the changes that it can and can’t take.
Being a huge baseball fan, I also really enjoyed the discussions about the game and the yips that so many players have suffered.
I listened to the audio of this one and real enjoyed the narration and pacing as well as the romantic escape the story provided.