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Evvie Drake has been with her husband since she was 16. Now, half her life later, she has decided it’s time to leave him. She’s packed up a few bags and is heading out when she gets a call saying her husband has been in a car crash. When she arrives at the hospital, he’s dead. So now she’s a widow, and no one knows she was leaving him; she doesn’t tell even her best friend, Andy.
Evvie’s complicated feelings on this whole situation keep her isolated and mostly confined to her house for some months, except for her weekly breakfasts with Andy. Then Andy gets a call from an old friend of his, Dean Tenney, a celebrated Major League pitcher who got a case of the “yips” —an inexplicable sudden inability to pitch. Dean is looking to get out of the big city, away from all the commentators and the constant talk about his failure, and Andy suggests he come up to stay in Maine for a while. Evvie has a small apartment at the back of her big house, so thanks to Andy, she gets Dean as a temporary tenant.
Both are hurting, and neither wants to talk about the cause of their pain, so they agree at the outset they can be friendly and chat about anything but those issues. Not long after Dean moves in, he and Evvie become friends, and then possibly more, and they even talk about the things they agreed not to discuss. Slowly, each of them starts getting a taste that there can be a future past the events that have stopped them in their tracks.
It’s not hard to fall right into the story of Evvie Drake Starts Over. I empathized with the characters and the battles they are fighting within. Evvie in particular has to come to grips with what she faced in her marriage and how little she shared with anyone close to her. Evvie and Dean’s conversations with each other are so natural, and while their attraction to each other is evident, it’s also clear they have to find their way through their problems individually even as they help each other along. I liked their banter, all the little ways their connection popped off the pages. I was moved by the growth that occurred and the hope for better things for both of them. A sweet story.
Rated: High, for 30-plus uses of strong language and a sex scene without a lot of details. Trigger alert: There are references to emotional abuse in a marriage.
* I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
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