Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

Evvie Drake Starts Over
by
Linda Holmes

Rating:

If you’re looking for a fun, feel-good romantic comedy, here’s an entertaining story about two people, adrift for very different reasons. Evvie Drake is newly widowed, living in the coastal lobster town of Calcasset, Maine. She and her husband had seemed the perfect home-town couple, but Evvie knows different.

Evvie’s best friend, Andy Buck, is ready to help her jump start her life. After all, she helped him get back on his feet after his wife left. And now, Andy just happens to have a friend who is moving up from New York and is looking for a place to stay, the perfect tenant for Evvie’s attached apartment.

The friend is not just a typical guy, though. He’s the famous, World Series-winning New York Yankee pitcher, Dean Tenney. Dean’s in a bit of a slump, having fallen victim to the dreaded “yips.” Fans are convinced that Dean has lost his stuff for good. Booed off the field, now Dean is taking a break from baseball.

So Dean moves in and he and Evvie strike a deal, declaring two subjects off limits: Evvie’s husband and baseball. It seems like a good basis for friendship, but romantic tension gets in the way. From here, readers are treated to an entertaining advance and retreat campaign, with just the right amount of tension.

At the core of this fun story are likeable characters, great dialogue, plenty of humor and solid themes of love, friendship and family. I didn’t mind that the book followed a familiar plot formula because the reward was the fun I had along the way.

I recommend Evvie Drake Starts Over to readers who are looking for the perfect book to curl up with on the weekend. Do you like romantic comedies? What are your favorites?

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Who’s That Indie Author? N.A. Granger

Author name:  N.A. Granger (Noelle)

Genre:  Cozy Mystery

Books:  The Rhe Brewster Mystery Series: Death in a Mudflat; Death by Pumpkin; Death in a Dacron Sail; Death in a Red Canvas Chair

         

Bio:  N.A. GRANGER is a Professor Emerita at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. After forty years of research and teaching undergraduates and medical students, plus earning her EMT license, she decided to use her knowledge of human anatomy and emergency medicine in mystery writing. In addition to the Rhe Brewster Mystery Series, she has written for Coastal Living and Sea Level magazines and several times for the Bella Online Literary Review. Her latest mystery, Death in a Mudflat, was released in June of this year. You can find more of her writing and musings on her website: saylingaway.wordpress.com. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband and a Maine coon cat who blogs, and she spends a portion of every summer in Maine, researching for her books and selling them, too.

Favorite thing about being a writer:  Using my little gray cells! I’m a pantser – I just sit down and write – and one of the best parts of the day is going back and reading, sometimes with a “where-the-heck-did-that-come-from?” – what I’ve written that day.  A close second is having someone tell me they love my books!

Biggest challenge as an indie author:  Marketing and publicity. I’ve done all the suggested tried and true things and also used publicity firms. I’m not sure they were worth the cost for the outcome. I think I’ll just pound the pavements, going to Indie bookstores and seeking readings on my own, and push the email, twitter and blogging. What’s unfortunate is that M&P are no fun!

Favorite books:  This is challenging. A sampling: books by P.D. James (one of my favorite mystery authors), Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth, Tolkien’s The Ring Trilogy, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Sarah Orne Jewell’s Country of the Pointed Firs.

Contact Information: Email: sailingawayng@gmail.com
Blog: saylingaway.wordpress.com
Twitter: @rhebrewster
Facebook: Noelle A. Granger
Amazon: N.A. Granger

Awards/special recognition:  Mmm. I won second place in the Bloggers Bash writing contest in 2017 – my first time winning anything…

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Are you an indie author?  Do you want to build your indie author network? Get your name out on Who’s That Indie Author!

Email bvitelli2009@gmail.com for a bio template and other details.

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Death in a Mudflat by N. A. Granger

Death in a Mudflat
by
N.A. Granger

Rating:

When a dead woman’s body emerges from a mudflat in Pequod, Maine, it doesn’t matter that part-time detective Rhe Brewster and the chief of police are at a wedding across the way. Rhe and her former brother-in-law (and new love interest), Sam Brewster, are more than willing to run over, don a set of hazmat suits and secure the scene.

Sam and Rhe can only initially guess at the whys and hows, but their expert team’s careful attention to detail and Rhe’s nose for making connections take the reader on an investigation that is both cozy and challenging and in which Rhe places herself in many dangerous situations. Is she reckless or is she just an ace detective? Now that they’re a couple, Sam may have trouble working this out.

Death in a Mudflat is Granger’s fourth Rhe Brewster mystery, a fun series set in the fictional coastal town of Pequod. In this small-town setting, Granger has developed a cast of characters and community that reflect New England values and personalities. But just like other small towns and larger communities across the country, Pequod struggles with modern problems, including the east coast’s growing heroin crisis.

As the investigation continues, Rhe and Sam discover possible connections to other deaths, casting doubt on several shady characters. And when a student from Pequod College turns up dead, they must consider an even larger case. Granger does a great job introducing the second case into the story and readers won’t know if they are connected until the story’s exciting end.

These investigations consume a lot of time, while Rhe continues to work as an Emergency Room nurse at Sturtevant Hospital and also raise her son, Jack, an active eight-year-old. But Rhe, Sam and their friends manage to keep the fun going in their own lives. A little romance and a couple fights over Rhe’s risk-taking make the story both realistic and entertaining. In addition, Rhe’s close friendship with Paulette McGillivray adds another dimension to the story when Paulette joins a mystery group dedicated to solving cold cases.

Granger’s extensive medical knowledge shows, as Rhe’s hospital and police life forever overlap. The author also includes details about modern police procedures and technology which greatly enhance the story. Readers will also enjoy how Granger incorporates hot coffee and many tasty foods into her characters’ days, often from the Pie and Pickle, Pequod’s local café.

Themes about love, friendship, helping others and justice over the bad guys make Death in a Mudflat and the whole series great reads and I recommend these stories to mystery readers who like a good puzzle as well as others who enjoy reading about modern life in a small town.

Also by N. A. Granger:

Death in a Red Canvas Chair
Death in a Dacron Sail
Death by Pumpkin
Death at the Asylum (coming 2020)

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I read Death in a Mudflat as part of my library’s Summer Reading Challenge to read a book set within the past 20 years.

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Book Talk – Summer People by Brian Groh

Image: Pixabay

Welcome to a new and occasional feature on Book Club Mom called Book Talk, home to quick previews of new and not-so-new books that catch my eye.

Now that winter has finally departed and warm weather is here, I can consider reading books about summer! Summer People, a debut novel (2007) by Brian Groh has been sitting on my shelf for a while. I don’t know where I picked it up, but, having paddled many a boat back in the day, I’m sure it was the cover that made me grab it!

The story is about Nathan Empson, who has taken a summer job as a caretaker for Ellen Broderick, an old woman from an old-money New England coastal town. Nathan will make a lot of money if he can safely navigate through many relationship traps set by the people in this exclusive community. And it isn’t long before Ellen’s alarming behavior makes his job a bigger challenge. Soon Nathan knows he must be very careful when scandalous secrets about the old woman’s past and the people in town threaten new friendships and a budding romance.

The story was inspired by the author’s own experience when, at twenty-two, he became a caretaker for an old woman in Maine. Groh kept a journal during that time and excerpts from it are published at the back of the book. He notes in an interview, however, that the story is its own and he is definitely not Nathan! I could not find additional information about the author, other than links on Amazon and Goodreads, but the book received solid early praise and attention. Groh was a travel writer before he wrote Summer People. Perhaps he went back to that.

Maybe Summer People is a “one and done,” but it definitely sounds like a beach read to me!

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