In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth “Evvie” Drake rarely leaves her large, painfully empty house nearly a year after her husband’s death in a car crash. Everyone in town, even her best friend, Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside, and Evvie doesn’t correct them.

Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher and Andy’s childhood best friend, is wrestling with what miserable athletes living out their worst nightmares call the “yips”: he can’t throw straight anymore, and, even worse, he can’t figure out why. As the media storm heats up, an invitation from Andy to stay in Maine seems like the perfect chance to hit the reset button on Dean’s future.

When he moves into an apartment at the back of Evvie’s house, the two make a deal: Dean won’t ask about Evvie’s late husband, and Evvie won’t ask about Dean’s baseball career. Rules, though, have a funny way of being broken—and what starts as an unexpected friendship soon turns into something more. To move forward, Evvie and Dean will have to reckon with their pasts—the friendships they’ve damaged, the secrets they’ve kept—but in life, as in baseball, there’s always a chance—up until the last out.

I know better, but I grabbed this book because I liked the cover. Lucky for me, the writing was exactly the style I like, so it turned out to be a fun, I-can’t-wait-to-read-it-again book.

While it’s always fun to slip into the fantasy of romance with a perfect hero, it’s also fun to see not-so-perfect people work things out, and that’s exactly what Evvie and Dean are — not so perfect. They both have to overcome a lot (including issues they aren’t even aware that they have), and it’s heartwarming to see how they do that.

Their relationship (especially their banter) is so easy and fun, that it’s hard not to like them both (for me, anyway — they have just the right amount of sarcasm and not-too-seriousness). And Andy — what a great best-friend story line.

For me, the characters were all relatable in some way, and their struggles were understandable. I loved reading about them and especially enjoyed the ending. I hope Holmes writes another novel; I’d love to read it.

Rated PG-13/R for language and thematic elements. Get your copy here!