Evvie Drake Starts Over: Comfort Reading

Last week, my friend Laura and I went to see an author panel with Linda Holmes, the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour, and first-time author of the delicious novel, Evvie Drake Starts Over. Readers of the blog know I adore Pop Culture Happy Hour, and I have been hearing about Holmes' writing project for years as she first started writing it and then eventually sold the book and officially had to worry about editing and marketing. To see her live in person and get a copy of this book that I had been hearing about for so many years was brilliant. It also helps that she might be one of the most charming ladies on the planet.

Evvie Drake Starts Over is exactly the kind of book you would expect Linda Holmes to write. Over the years, I have learnt what she likes in her pop culture, and this book is brimming with pop culture references, witty banter, silly jokes, and a well-defined three-dimensional heroine who is wrestling with her demons but does it with aplomb. Evvie (it rhymes with Chevy), is a widow who is suffering from immense guilt because she never told anyone that she hated her husband and was planning on leaving him on the night he died. So now that he's dead, she has to act like the grieving widow, stuck in a giant house that is filled with bad memories and figuring out how on earth she gets her life moving again. Enter Dean Tenney, a pitcher for the Yankees who had to unceremoniously retire from baseball when he woke up one day with the "yips," a bizarre psychological condition where an athlete simply cannot do the thing they were good at anymore. He can no longer pitch, so after some excruciating games, his career sputters to a halt. Eager to get away from New York, he takes up an offer from his childhood friend Andy, who lives in Maine and says Dean can rent the apartment in his best friend's house for a few months as he tries to figure out his next steps. Who's Andy's best friend? Evvie.

You can see where this is going, of course. Dean and Evvie start off as mere acquaintances, quickly evolve into friends, and then fireworks start to spark. It's a slow-burn romance that still feels explosive, probably because of the enormous amounts of screwball banter that make it clear they were meant for each other. But there's also so much emotional work that these two need to do. Each is grieving a very specific loss and needs to come to terms with how their life moves on. My favorite facet of this book is that while it has a romantic angle, it is still very much a book about how these two characters deal with their problems independently, and not co-dependently. Also, a lot of romances tend to go back and forth with the male and female perspective, but here, Evvie's story is of paramount importance. Watching her come to terms with what has happened to her and what new adventures she might have in her future is the most joyous aspect of this novel. Some of these characters have to deal with harsh truths, but the end result is a warm, gentle, and kind story about second chances. As Linda Holmes is the reason I even discovered the romance genre to begin with, it makes sense that the woman knows how to craft the perfect romance.

At the author panel, a question was asked during the Q&A about whether the authors, all of whom were arts critics, ever felt bad that they weren't reporting on more "important" things like politics or climate change. Linda Holmes brought down the house with the following metaphor: "You know in the movie The Martian, where Matt Damon is stuck on Mars but needs to get home to Earth? He spend the first half of that movie growing potatoes. Now the potatoes won't get him back to Earth. But they're what he needs to stay alive so that he can then figure out all the other stuff to get back. So I like to think of my writing as space potatoes. It's what helps people get through the day before they tackle all the other stuff that needs to be solved." I have told that story to every person I know. To me, this blog is my version of space potatoes. And last week, when I finished reading Evvie Drake Starts Over, I smiled and thanked Linda Holmes for this delicious space potato of a novel. I can't wait to devour the next one.