Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Excellent Use of a Great Dane in Romance, The Rest Was Good.

Back After This by Linda Holmes

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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 […]

All the single ladies

Flying Solo by Linda Holmes

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I knew of Linda Holmes from her debut novel, Evvie Drake Starts Over. I enjoyed it enough to eventually pick up her second novel, Flying Solo (2022). The story takes place in the same town of her first novel. Laurie Sassalyn grew up in the small town of Calcasset, Maine. She finds herself back there after her Great Aunt Dot passes away. Laurie is volunteered by her family to go through Aunt Dot’s things, so she moves into Dot’s house while she begins to organize everything. Laurie has […]

“It was really happening. She was in a closet, with her high school boyfriend, listening to a man talk to another man about an ill-gotten duck.”

Flying Solo by Linda Holmes

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  This was a comforting novel wherein a search for the provenance of a wooden duck is essentially a metaphor for a search for the meaning of life – particularly one lived by a single woman over 40. The opening chapter describes how Laurie would escape her home – loving, but full of the noise of her four brothers (two older, two younger) – and remove herself to the comfort of her Great Aunt Dot’s home. Dot would make space for Laurie, allowing her peace […]

Duck Heist!!!! #CBRBINGO – Bird

Flying Solo by Linda Holmes

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This is a silly, inconsequential—one might almost say *cozy*—book that is largely about the retrieval of a wooden duck, and I liked it very much. I really love Linda Holmes. I’m in for her whole thing, after this book. I was hoping Evvie Drake Starts Over wouldn’t be a fluke, and it wasn’t. While I didn’t like Flying Solo as much as I loved Evvie Drake, this was a really good time. You don’t often get stories from the POV of a woman who isn’t […]

was rooting for a bit of a different ending

Flying Solo by Linda Holmes

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These books really hammer home the difficulties of finding a HEA later in life, don’t they? What do you do when you have a life and like that life? How can someone fit into your life without it becoming a whole thing? The story here, set in the same charming whiter than white town of Somewhere, Maine as Evvie Drake Starts Over (we actually hear about Evvie in a voice over about the local high school baseball coach!) (in the midst of a bit of an argument, […]

…you don’t have to be single to be independent. And you don’t have to be married to be loved.

Flying Solo by Linda Holmes

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CBR14 BINGO: Cozy Square (I slated this one for the New Square, but when I thought about how reading this book made me feel, Cozy hit the spot. Also, it includes a cozy little mystery.) I read and really enjoyed Holmes’ debut novel Evvie Drake Starts Over. I appreciated the small town, Bull Durham-y, messy but realistic romance of it all. This novel takes place in the same Maine town and references a handful of characters from her debut novel. It’s not necessary to read the first book […]



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