Linda Holmes is probably known to many of you out there in internet-land for her work on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour or her first two books, Evvie Drake Starts Over and Flying Solo. This is not where I know her from – I am familiar with Holmes through her guest appearances on the Screen Drafts podcast. When she was last on for their 90s Sports Movies draft her next book Back After This came up and I was intrigued. Intrigued enough that I requested it from NetGalley and was granted an ARC.
Back After This is the story of Cecily Foster, a podcast producer, who is talked into hosting a show about her dating life under the direction of social media influencer Eliza Cassidy who has christened herself a romantic relationship coach. Eliza’s participation ensures significant advertiser dollars for the struggling production company Cecily is working for, and this is the long-awaited hosting opportunity that Cecily has been working towards, just in the last possible genre of show she wants to be working in. Before they can start recording the 20 blind first dates that will be the backbone of the show, Cecily has an honest to goodness real life meet cute with Will, and their budding friendship threatens to upend Eliza’s plan, and entirely complicates Cecily’s notions about the possibilities for her romantic future.
This is a single POV story, and I think for the most part that worked well in the execution of the final third of the book, but I struggled for the first third of the book to really sink into the story – I was interested but I wasn’t fully engaged. Holmes creates a detailed backstory for Cecily, her last major relationship’s dissolution four years ago included her losing a professional credit that has built the career of her ex-boyfriend in major ways and Cecily struggles with how she let that unfold and what it says about her value to her romantic partner and herself. She’s dated in the intervening years, but with little success and its sort of killed her desire to get back out there, even though she imagines for herself a life trajectory that involves marriage and possibly kids. She has a good relationship with her sister and brother-in-law, but her parents are not in their lives much. She’s also the de facto office mom, by nature of always being prepared and her boss has a nasty habit of relying on her work ethic to smooth over problems without rewarding her for those efforts and it has a direct impact on her self-worth.
But, for me, the way that backstory was initially folded into the lengthy set up of the podcast, the introduction of Eliza’s plan, and eventually the dates, and the Will of it all, was not paced in a way that felt satisfying. I kept waiting for the action to happen, for the random running into Will moments to add up, to the blind dates to begin, for Cecily to start really doing the introspection that we were being primed for, and unfortunately when all those things did start happening, I was soured a bit by having waited so long for them. There was also a lot of rushed action in the last couple chapters which would have been so much more impactful if fleshed out – the return of the ex, dealing with professional betrayal, the reflection on self-worth, the discussions with Will about whether needing to “sort out his life” was even a real thing. I would have loved more time there, and less on some of the repetitive things in the beginning.
This is a 3.5 book for me, when it was going well it was going really well, and I was pulled in by Homes’ authorial voice and ability to describe the world her characters inhabit so fully. I just wish the pacing worked better for me so I could round it up.