I absolutely adored this book! The plot and characters made it an easy and quick read. The story follows the main character Evvie in a small town in mind following the unexpected death of her husband. Her platonic friend Andy brings up the idea of his childhood friend Dean staying in the apartment attached to her home. After he arrives the story follows both of their journeys as they better understand what they actually want from their lives.

The novel is a light and easy read. I think what I most enjoyed is the conversations between the characters. So often I find the "falling in love" part of novels unrealistic, but this book provided real beautiful correspondences between the characters. I highly recommend!

First book by the author and will definitely check out more books. It was a fun easy read but not fluffy with no substance. It was humorous and sensitive all at the same time. I thought the characters were all well developed and I was sad when it was over.

This was my first read by this author, and I was so pleased with it. Evvie Drake Starts Over is an intelligently written, humorous, and sensitive novel that is about our protagonist, Eveleth “Evvie” Drake as she starts over and moves on from a marriage she was miserable in that ended when her husband died unexpectedly. She is overcome with guilt and paralyzed with indecision about the future. Through a series of random circumstances, into Evvie’s life walks Dean Tenney. Dean was a Major League Baseball player who suddenly lost his ability to pitch, in a spectacularly crash and burn way. The author deftly allows them to connect and ultimately heal each other.

The real highlight in this one was the dialogue. I laughed out loud so many times!

Thank you Netgalley for my free copy!!! I definitely intend on reading more by this author now.

I really enjoyed this book, which was warm and humorous with engaging characters and an entertaining story. I'd recommend this to readers looking for a light, thought not fluffy read!

Let me start by saying that I loved this novel. It focuses on Evvie Drake, a woman who is more or less happy, with an okay job. Her husband passed away over a year ago and while everyone thinks Evvie is broken up over is, what we quickly discovered is that Evvie was in the proccess of trying to leave her husband the night he died. Now, she's been beating herself up over it ever since.

This was a good story, but what truly elevated the novel was the fact that it was written by a woman. That may sound odd, but let me explain. Not once in the novel is Evvie's body described to you. Why? Because it isn't important. She mentions her frazzled hair and trying to tie it back, but that's it. Had a man written this book, I'm sorry, but I could probably have drawn you a perfect picture of her body and it would have been completely unimportant. By having Holmes write this story, she was able to move past the artificial layers and descriptions. We were able to learn about the real emotions of the characters and their surroundings. I could actually see the daisy plates and the front poor. That black baseball glove with the pink laces is burned into my mind. But Evvie? She could look like anyone and I love it.

I loved this book! I love small town settings. I felt deeply for all of the characters and thought the relationships were interesting and honest and refreshing. The romance was really sweet. I'm a big fan of Linda Holmes from Pop Culture Happy Hour and I could really hear her strong voice in the writing.

Evvie ("like Chevy, not Evie like Max Greevie" she says in the novel) is a recent widow who isn't sad about her husband's death. In fact, she was packing the car to leave him when she got the call he was in an accident. Her best friend Andy's childhood best friend is former Yankees pitcher Dean Tenny, who recently developed a case of the yips (for those of you who don't speak sports, that's when you go from great to sucky in 0.3 seconds). To get away from the media hounding him, Dean moves to Maine and rents the apartment in the back of Evvie's house. The two get to know each other and fall in love. It's not quite that simple, as both the main characters are very flawed and have to work out their issues before getting together.

Easily one of my favorite books from this year. Swoony and thoughtful and perfect. I fell in love with Evvie Drake.,

I really enjoyed spending time with Evvie as she dealt with grief, guilt, evolving friendships, and falling in love.

*Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

I hate baseball. It's just so boring, and I've never understood the appeal of baseball players. BUT I do like Linda Holmes, and have admired her work on NPR for a while, so I decided to read Evvie Drake Starts Over, despite the baseball playing main character. It was so delightful! (This is just a long way of saying even if you don't like baseball, give this one a shot.) Anyway, Evvie is having trouble dealing with her feelings of guilt since her husband's death, and so her best friend Andy recommends she get a tenant for the apartment attached to her house. She'll have company and a distraction, and Andy just so happens to know someone who needs somewhere to live - Dean Tenney, a pitcher for the Yankees who has lost his ability to throw and thus his job. Evvie and Dean are both trying to move forward, but it's hard when they're not really dealing with their respective pasts. Evvie especially needs to work through her history with her husband. Evvie and Dean are great characters, and I liked the way Holmes depicts the somewhat claustrophobic Maine town they live in - everyone knows Evvie's business and they won't let her forget it. I also loved Evvie and Andy's relationship. This was a fun read - recommended.

This book was a fun read about a woman who finds herself having to start over in an unexpected way. Evvie finds that she has been lying to herself and to her friends for years about her life. As the lies get exposed, Evvie must learn to deal with the truth and all the ugliness it includes. Dean is a baseball player whose career ends suddenly when he gets a case of the yips. These two roommates must decide to be honest with each other before they can start over with each other. The characters are likable and easy to root for.

This was such a fun book to read! I was looking for something to read that was lighter after reading a few harder novels in a row, and this was exactly what I needed! Such likeable characters, and I appreciate the platonic relationship that was thrown in there as well.
Great book!

I loved spending time in Evvie Drake's world and getting to know her her friends and family in her little Maine town. I enjoyed the journey that Evvie and Dean take from tenant and landlord to romance, and seeing each of them figure out how to rebuild their lives. It was a great balance of smart and funny!

I have to admit that I wanted to like this more than I did. As a long time fan of NPR's Linda Holmes, I was really looking forward to reading this. But I just couldn't get into it. I felt that it was slow moving and I wasn't super invested in the budding relationship between the two main characters. I think this could be a good pick for the right reader, someone who enjoys books like The Wedding Date (which I also found slightly boring) and other sort of low key romantic comedy types. It just wasn't for me...

This was an enjoyable book. I liked the main characters -- Eveleth (Evvie), Andy, and Dean. I am glad that the author choose to have the strong platonic relationship between Evvie and Andy, and even had a brief attempt at a relationship as part of the backstory. It is not often that one finds a book where a male and female character can have a close relationship and be mutual sources of support without one person secretly being in love with the other person or the friends eventually becoming lovers.

One of the best aspects of this book is how relatable is the character of Evvie. She knows that people have a certain image of her and her life and certain expectations of how she should behave, and while those impressions and expectations of her are mistaken, she cannot bring herself to contravene those expectations, not wanting to cause others pain and not wanting to face what kind of person she is if her true feelings are known. She also has a desire to fix others, as with Dean and his pitching career (or lack thereof since developing the "yips."). I enjoyed watching the evolution of Evvie as situations forced her to confront her past and admit that she had essentially been living a lie and as she realized how truly toxic her marriage had been, and as she finally had to confront how much of herself she had been hiding/suppressing due to the circumstances she had experienced so far in her life.

I received a copy of the e-book via NetGalley.

This book was really lovely. It's a slow burn and not a fast-paced novel, but it is the perfect book to read wrapped in a blanket with a cup of tea/cocoa/coffee. It had humor, heart, and just lots of feeling. I highly recommend!

One of my favorites of 2019!! The story drew me in right away. I loved the characters and their friendships. It was so sweet. Both main characters had issues to work through but really helped and learned from each other. It was cute, sweet and pulls on your heart strings. It reminded me of Katherine Center’s novels. This will be a summer must read for Women’s Fiction.

I am not going to talk about the plot here, and I recommend reading this book with no information other than the title, which should be enough. The way the plot unfolds is lovely, and learning about Evvie only through Linda Holmes' words is the best way to go. Evvie has a unique story while being completely relatable, and there's a crying scene that made me feel completely seen. Getting to know Evvie is worth whatever time you have to spend.

I was immediately captivated by the quirky perspective of thirty-year-old widowed Eveleth (Evvie) who lives in a small Maine coastal town. The night her husband dies in a car crash, she has decided to leave him and has begun packing up her car when she receives the news. Unable to tell even her best friend, Andy, that she had been so unhappy in her marriage, she struggles to come to terms with her new status as a ‘grieving’ widow.

Enter a former Major League pitcher, friend of Andy’s, who was fired for suddenly being unable to pitch. He rents an apartment at the back of Evvie’s large home to try and figure out what to do next and an unlikely friendship begins, eventually leading to something more. As Evvie and Dean each grapple with their respective emotional dilemmas that they only gradually reveal to each other, they find understanding and love, yet, of course, silly miscommunication gets in the way of ‘happily ever after.’

The dialogue and Evvie’s inner musings are hilarious and the gradual, natural movement of the two from friendship to romance is heartwarming and engaging. The writing is smooth and interesting and keeps the reader moving along, wanting more, rooting for the main characters. The peripheral characters are also interesting, and the Maine setting is charming. I highly recommend this light-hearted read that also touches on the important theme of being true to one’s self while being honest with others.

Thanks to Random House-Ballantine and Net Galley for providing me with the ARC. I truly enjoyed this book.

A feel-good, heartwarming, story about the unlikely relationship between a woman whose husband died just as she was (literally) leaving him and a star Yankee pitcher who “loses his stuff” in a spectacularly public way.

Well-written with great banter, an array of likable characters, and plenty of humor. The premise is plausible enough and I enjoyed the social commentary and details of every day life in this small town on the mid-Coast of Maine. There is a lot more depth to the characters than is usual for a women’s fiction offering of this sort.

The author is the host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast — I haven’t heard of this (I’m not a big podcast person), but I like the title, and I can guess that this explains a lot about the great character interactions!) Interesting to note that in two of the primary families, it is the mother that left, leaving the father to raise the children alone. I’m noticing a trend of this kind of gender role swapping which is always interesting!

One small annoyance for me personally — a (pretty humorous) diatribe on the part of one character about a woman who was destroying their book club because she wanted people to actually read the books and didn’t accept that book clubs were just for socializing. I am that woman, and I stand by my demands!!

Great for fans of Kristan Higgins