Evvie Drake Starts Over
I must admit that the book, Evvie Drake Starts Over, by Linda Holmes, did not capture and hold my attention. Evvie (rhymes with Chevy) is a woman in her 20s whose husband Tim, dies suddenly in a car crash. Apparently, everyone in the small-town loves Tim except for Evvie.
The book jumps forward to a year after the accident where we begin to learn about Evvie’s present life where is seems, the author wants us to build some empathy for the character. We learn that Evvie has, with her husband’s consent, a platonic friendship with a male divorcee. We also learn that Evvie’s was reared by her father after her mother left Evvie on her birthday. Evvie is in a sad state of limbo, working sporadically as a transcriptionist, still living in the same house.
Bit by bit we learn why Evvie no longer loved her husband, and while the story is designed to help us support Evvie’s position, the examples the author uses to make her case feel petty at times because the examples start small and slowly escalate but not to a point where the reader gains enough empathy to be rooting for Evvie. When the author does attempt to make Evvie appear noble, the storyline just doesn’t ring true.
Near the very end, the author gives the reader an opportunity to empathize with Evvie as she hits the bottom and begins her journey upward and it is the first time in the book where I felt Evvie had read depth as a character. Unfortunately, the storyline was not strong, and the Evie’s character simply did not ring true enough for me.