REVIEW: Back After This by Linda Holmes

JayneA Reviews / Book Reviews / Recommended ReadsContemporary / dating show / First-Person / podcast2 Comments

Cecily Foster loves to make podcasts. She fiercely protects her colleagues, dearly adores her friends, and never misses dinner with her sister. But after a disastrous relationship with a colleague who stole her heart and her ideas, she’s put romantic love on hold.

When the boss who’s disappointed her again and again finally offers her the chance to host her own show, she wants to be thrilled. But there’s a catch—actually, two catches. First, the show will be about Cecily’s dating life. And second, she has to follow the guidance of influencer and newly minted relationship coach Eliza Cassidy, whose relentlessly upbeat attitude seems ready-made for social media, not real life.

Cecily would rather do anything other than put her singledom on display (ugh) or take advice from the internet (UGH). But when her boss hints that doing the show is the only way to protect a friend’s job, she realizes she has no choice.

To make matters more complicated, once she’s committed to twenty blind dates of Eliza’s choosing, Cecily finds herself unable to stop thinking about Will, a photographer she helped to rescue a very big and very lovable lost dog. Even though there are sparks between the two, Will’s own path is uncertain, and Eliza’s skeptical comments about Cecily’s decision-making aren’t helping. On the one hand, Will seems great. But on the other hand . . . don’t they all?

As Cecily struggles to balance the life she truly desires and the one Eliza wants to create for her, she finds herself at a crossroads. Can Cecily sort through all the advice and find a way to do what she loves without losing herself in the process?

Dear Ms. Holmes, 

It’s fitting that I finished reading this book on Valentines Day seeing as that day is prominent in the book but maybe not for the obvious reasons or should I say for more than the obvious one. It has lovely, realistic characters in a believable setting without a flabby ending. And a great dog. See, I like dogs, too. 

“Can I have a second with Toby?” I said, and Brick practically left a Brick-shaped puff of smoke behind as he beelined out the door, pulling it shut behind him. “So,” I summed up. “You want me to host a show where somebody teaches me how to get a boyfriend. And it’s going to be sponsored by eating alone, drinking alone, dying alone, and cat toys.”

      “That’s very glass-half-empty.”

      “Toby.”

      

Sometimes it’s harder to write reviews for books I’m giving an A grade to as I want to do them justice and not forget anything that I bookmarked along the way. The cartoon cover and premise of the story scream kooky rom-com so I can’t actually recall what made me decide to give this one a shot. Maybe I hoped that it wouldn’t be those things? Anyway, it’s not pratfalls or filled with embarrassing dates. People act like adults with some common sense even if they do make mistakes. The place where Cecily works is worse than some I’ve heard of but better than others. I’ll bet that some aspect of it will resonate with most people who have worked for more than a few years. Frankly all of this was a relief as well. 

“I am trying to save my friend’s job by documenting my humiliating efforts to offer myself up to an indifferent buyers’ market like a Beanie Baby on eBay, how are you?”

Cecily has done what a lot of people, especially women unfortunately, have done, which is work hard with someone they love only to lose what they’ve created because they never thought he’d say, “I don’t think I love you anymore” and walk away. Cecily is skilled at her job and has made a comeback but it still hurts her to hear about her ex’s successes that he’s built off of what she put so much effort into. I like that she’s still, at times, angry and sad about all this. She’s a person who takes on the care of others which makes her a great friend, sister, and co-worker but when someone points out to her that what she does actually hurts her at times, I’m glad that she listens and works to change. Cecily does a lot of self discovery and growing throughout the book. 

“I think I want a lot of the things that everybody wants, which is part of what makes it so hard. I want a sense of humor. Intelligence. Kindness. Some concern about the world. Some sense that he’s passionate about things.” And not too much interest in weapons. And no self-referential tattoos. And don’t get mad at me because I think about my job in the middle of the night.

      “Nothing for you?” she said.

      “What do you mean?”

      “Well, I asked you what love looks like to you, and you described a person. You said he would be funny, smart, kind, and passionate about things. But you didn’t describe the relationship itself. You didn’t say how he would treat you, or what being together would look like. Do you see what I mean? You described a person you see yourself loving, but not what it would look like for them to love you.”

      Well, hell.

The dating part of the story and the person behind it are very millenial/Gen Z. Lots of Instagram, TikTok, collabs, influencing, etc are mentioned but I think the book will still appeal to a variety of readers. Cecily teaches someone about what she does and he returns the favor a bit with what he does but this never turns into class lectures and both limit themselves because they know how much someone else really wants to hear at one time. 

Yeah, it seemed okay. It seemed like your basic date. They talked. He talked, mostly. But, uh, I’m not going to lie. I’m not sure there’s a future for a woman like that with a guy who doesn’t salt his food, you know?

     

      I turned slowly to face her. “And that’s . . .”

      “It’s your waiter,” she said. “He was really funny, and he’s so cute.”

As I said, the dates aren’t for laughs and most of them are not actually “real time” in the book. One thing I like is that Eliza, the social media person behind everything, is trying to find people whom Cecily will like and hopes that she and at least some of her dates will hit it off and move toward possible relationships. Eliza does give Cecily some good advice, something Cecily realizes and tries to incorporate in her life. When the Plot Twist is revealed, Cecily has to overcome her initial feelings about what has happened but then, and this was amazing, she is honest about what she’s gained from all of this and admits it. Wow. 

He smiled, and I felt it. Zing. It had been an awfully long time since my last zing.

Cecily does find someone and I love this person. It’s fairly obvious who it is and she and he spend a lot of time together with lovely/funny scenes that make me sigh so this is more a romance than Chick Lit/Women’s-fiction. There are also work related issues for the employees of Palmetto Media, where Cecily works, to deal with, family stuff for Cecily and her someone (I love both their sisters and the fact that said sisters know their siblings well and are still pissed off at their sibling’s shitty exes) and of course I was waiting for the “shitty ex boyfriend” to appear. Booyah for how Cecily’s besties act and things play out. 

  “What are you cutting?”

“Could be a lot of things. Could just be mouth noises. Mouths are a menace.”

      He turned to me, and I felt him looking at my lips.

“Mouths?” he asked.

      I reminded myself to breathe. “They’re a curse to human beings,” I said. And then I said, “Admittedly, not always.”

      He laughed. “No.”

Our heroine has plenty of (justifiable) reasons for being upset towards the end but (yay) she gets her revenge yet also gets to tell her truth when the last podcast drops on Valentines day. Cecily is not surprised by what happens after that and I don’t think readers of the book will be either.  

I lifted my knee to wrap my leg around his, and he slid his hand under my thigh. I stopped kissing him long enough to mutter, “You got it right, by the way,” and he laughed against my lip and said, “Oh, good.”

      Oof. “Knob in the butt, knob in the butt, knob in the butt,” I sputtered, and the way he absolutely froze made me cackle. When I caught my breath I said, “I’m saying the doorknob is poking me in the behind and I need to scoot over like six inches.”     

“Ah, okay, now I get it,” he said, and somehow together we cleared the doorknob without disengaging. He went to pull my shirt over my head, but as he took both sides of it, he saw the words on the front—PRODUCERS DO IT WITHOUT CREDIT—and started to laugh. “This is good,” he said, and then pulled it up and off of me.

      “I wasn’t really dressed for this,” I said.

      “Doesn’t matter now,” he said, starting to tug at the waistband of my very comfy, very old shorts.

This scene is so good I’m going to quote more of it.

But he did something with his lips on my belly that I swear I still don’t understand. He kissed the inside of my wrist with this strange . . . curiosity? He said, “You’re killing me,” which is the kind of thing that sounds terribly and wretchedly corny and obvious unless it is said directly into your ear by a hot naked person you like very much, in which case it is like being made Queen of the Universe, the All-Powerful GODDESS of sex, in which case it is very very good.

But how does it end? Does Cecily find love through a podcast? Nah, I’m not gonna ruin that. She and he do think a bit and realize that they said some regrettable things in the heat of the moment and they both apologize – just that. Apologize without the expectation that this will fix everything but rather just because the other person deserves the apology.

“I don’t mean to use anything against you,” I said. And I did smile, because I couldn’t not, because I was beginning to realize I always did when we were together. “I just came here to tell you I don’t think anything is wrong with you. And I’m sorry that’s how it felt.” I thought about telling him all about the unfolding disaster at work, the way everything was collapsing, but that wasn’t his to carry for me. So I just said, “I think you’re just right exactly as you are, and if your life in twenty years looks anything like your life now, I think you’ll still be just right. And that’s . . . that’s all I wanted to say.” I moved to leave before I started crying, because that didn’t seem like the thing to do at all.

Cecily also does some thinking about herself, what she’s allowed people in her life to do and what she won’t allow anymore. Then she and he honestly talk some more, some other threads are wrapped up and we get a HFN/HEA epilogue with a lot about the dog, Buddy. And it’s lovely. A

~Jayne  

We stood up and he looked back at me, and I said, “I know I don’t look great. I was pretty discombobulated when I left for work. I didn’t even brush my hair.” He turned and started leading me toward his little bedroom. “I’m just going to mess it up anyway,” he said. “Happy Valentine’s Day.

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