soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2019-11-15 09:49 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2019-11-15 09:49 pm
Evvie Drake Starts Over, by Linda Holmes
This is a book which is in large part about the development of a romantic relationship, with the HEA and all, and yet it is somehow very clear to me that it is not a part of the Romance Genre, it's the Literary Fiction Genre. I don't know what it is about the book that is shouting this at me so clearly but there we are.
Anyway. I enjoyed the book? And I thought it was good. But I didn't particularly love it, idk.
Evvie is trying to figure out her life after her husband died on the day she was planning to leave him. Dean is a baseball player who's lost his ability to pitch (he's got the yips). He rents an apartment from her that's attached to her house, and they try not to talk about the things that are weighing heavily upon them but inevitably talk about these things nonetheless.
I liked the effort to show the importance of other relationships in Evvie's life, like how great her dad is, and her best-friendship with Andy, and her development of a friendship with Monica. But I did not like how Heterosexual this book was about friendships - after she and Andy both develop new romantic relationships, the book presents it as obvious and inevitable that their close friendship will pull back from what it was before. Which like. :( I was invested in their friendship! I was worried throughout most of the book that this was what would happen! I'm really annoyed that I was right!
The romantic relationship was....fine. I have a bit of trouble believing in it as a long-term thing, because I don't feel like the reader really gets to see why Evvie and Dean are into each other as individual people, instead of their relationship just being a side-effect of the inevitable intimacy of living together at a time when they're both emotionally vulnerable. But they seem happy with each other so that's very nice for them.
One final thing--content note for depictions of an abusive relationship. Evvie's dead husband was abusive, and the book is in large part about her coming to that realization and beginning to deal with the emotional fall-out from that.
Anyway. I enjoyed the book? And I thought it was good. But I didn't particularly love it, idk.
Evvie is trying to figure out her life after her husband died on the day she was planning to leave him. Dean is a baseball player who's lost his ability to pitch (he's got the yips). He rents an apartment from her that's attached to her house, and they try not to talk about the things that are weighing heavily upon them but inevitably talk about these things nonetheless.
I liked the effort to show the importance of other relationships in Evvie's life, like how great her dad is, and her best-friendship with Andy, and her development of a friendship with Monica. But I did not like how Heterosexual this book was about friendships - after she and Andy both develop new romantic relationships, the book presents it as obvious and inevitable that their close friendship will pull back from what it was before. Which like. :( I was invested in their friendship! I was worried throughout most of the book that this was what would happen! I'm really annoyed that I was right!
The romantic relationship was....fine. I have a bit of trouble believing in it as a long-term thing, because I don't feel like the reader really gets to see why Evvie and Dean are into each other as individual people, instead of their relationship just being a side-effect of the inevitable intimacy of living together at a time when they're both emotionally vulnerable. But they seem happy with each other so that's very nice for them.
One final thing--content note for depictions of an abusive relationship. Evvie's dead husband was abusive, and the book is in large part about her coming to that realization and beginning to deal with the emotional fall-out from that.
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I would be so mad about that "well of course we can't be as close anymore" friendship plotline!
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Evvie and her bff have a tradition of doing brunch together every saturday just the two of them, and it's something they both clearly value a great deal in their lives, and then they.....don't do that anymore. Because heteronormativity. It's so unfortunate.