
Back After This
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Linda Holmes
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By:
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Linda Holmes
About this listen
From the New York Times bestselling author of Evvie Drake Starts Over and Flying Solo, a podcast producer agrees to host a new series about modern dating—but will the show jeopardize her chance at finding real love?
“Romantic, smart, and exactly the book we all need right now. I adored this.”—Annabel Monaghan, author of Nora Goes Off Script
“You’ll sink into this story and never want it to end.”—Elissa Sussman, author of Funny You Should Ask
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?
©2025 Linda Holmes (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Hugely uplifting and hilariously funny, Back After This is the kind of smart, grounded romance that’s made Linda Holmes one of the most beloved voices in fiction. She’s just so good.”—Katie Cotugno, New York Times bestselling author of Birds of California
“Back After This is a propulsive, heart-warming journey through the difficult—and often petty—world of podcasting. I gobbled this book up in a single night, enchanted by Holmes’s all-too-real characters and their dogged pursuit of love. This book is a much-needed distraction—a fun, exciting, and sexy reprieve from the real world. I cannot wait to recommend it to all my friends.”—Kelsey McKinney, host of Normal Gossip and author of You Didn’t Hear This From Me
“To know Linda Holmes—whether through her work at NPR as a correspondent and host of the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast or as the author of warm-hearted, chatty novels Evvie Drake Starts Over and Flying Solo—is to love Linda Holmes. Her third novel, Back After This, is a delightful combination of her two fields.”—BookPage
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Flat storyline with monotone narration
- By Julia on 01-02-25
By: Weike Wang
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Jane and Dan at the End of the World
- By: Colleen Oakley
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Jane and Dan have been married for nineteen years, but Jane isn’t sure they’re going to make it to twenty. The mother of two feels unneeded by her teenagers, and her writing career has screeched to an unsuccessful halt. Her one published novel sold under five hundred copies. Worse? She’s pretty sure Dan is cheating on her. When the couple goes to the renowned upscale restaurant La Fin du Monde to celebrate their anniversary, Jane thinks it’s as good a place as any to tell Dan she wants a divorce.
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Stupendously Stupid
- By Mike B. on 04-06-25
By: Colleen Oakley
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Deep Cuts
- A Novel
- By: Holly Brickley
- Narrated by: Jayme Mattler
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s a Friday night in a campus bar in Berkeley, fall of 2000, and Percy Marks is pontificating about music again. Hall and Oates is on the jukebox, and Percy—who has no talent for music, just lots of opinions about it—can’t stop herself from overanalyzing the song, indulging what she knows to be her most annoying habit. But something is different tonight. The guy beside her at the bar, fellow student Joe Morrow, is a songwriter. And he could listen to Percy talk all night. Joe asks Percy for feedback on one of his songs—and the results kick off a partnership that will span years.
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Checks all the boxes
- By Melissa Hudson on 03-14-25
By: Holly Brickley
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Show Don't Tell
- Stories
- By: Curtis Sittenfeld
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch, Curtis Sittenfeld, George Newbern, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.
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Always a pleasure
- By joshua simons on 03-21-25
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The Romance Chronicles Bundle (Books 1 and 2)
- By: Sophie Love
- Narrated by: Elaine Wise
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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A bundle of books Love Like This and Love Like That in Sophie Loves’s The Romance Chronicles series. This bundle offers books one and two in one convenient file, with over 150,000 words of reading. A whirlwind romantic comedy that is as profound as it is funny, The Romance Chronicles will make you laugh, cry, and will keep you turning pages late into the night - and will make you fall in love with romance all over again.
By: Sophie Love
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The Strange Case of Jane O.
- A Novel
- By: Karen Thompson Walker
- Narrated by: Jay Myers, Alex Sarrigeorgiou
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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A year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. Three days after her first visit to a psychiatrist, Jane suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.
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The performances were soul-reaching
- By Laurie E. Barshay on 03-29-25
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The Usual Family Mayhem
- A Novel
- By: HelenKay Dimon
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Kasey Nottingham needs a splashy idea at her company where they find and develop the next big thing for investors—her job depends on it. Impulsively, she pitches Mags’ Desserts, a beloved small-town business run by her grandma Mags and live-in “best friend” Celia, two women who overcame deadbeat husbands and financial ruin to build a word-of-mouth clientele. Kasey expects her boss to say no. Instead, he sends her home to North Carolina to land the deal…and now she has a problem.
By: HelenKay Dimon
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It's a Love Story
- By: Annabel Monaghan
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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From the USA Today bestselling author of Nora Goes Off Script, a novel about a former adolescent TV punch line who has left her awkwardness in the rearview mirror thanks to a fake-it-till-you-make-it mantra that has her on the cusp of success, until she tells a lie that sets her on a crash course with her past, spending a week on Long Island with the last man she thinks might make her believe in love.
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Great Story, Terrible Narrator
- By Robin Goldberg on 06-18-25
By: Annabel Monaghan
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First-Time Caller
- Heartstrings, Book 1
- By: B.K. Borison
- Narrated by: E.J. Bingham, Hathaway Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Aiden Valentine has a secret: he’s fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore’s romance hotline, that’s a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and Heartstrings into the limelight. Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. She has a good job; an incredible family; and a smart, slightly devious kid. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life—or lack thereof—she begins to question if she’s as happy as she believed.
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FIRST TIME CALLER
- By Melissa Whitmarsh on 02-11-25
By: B.K. Borison
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Unlikely Story
- By: Ali Rosen
- Narrated by: Carly Robins
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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As a relationship therapist, Nora helps patients explore their feelings honestly. But she’s hiding an embarrassing relationship secret of her own: she’s in love with someone she’s never even met. J edits the advice column Nora’s been writing anonymously for the last seven years. He’s in London, she’s in New York, and they communicate solely through shared files. When he confides that his girlfriend’s out of the picture, and her boss asks her to come to London, Nora takes both as a sign.
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Such a cute story
- By Lori on 06-05-25
By: Ali Rosen
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Something Like Fate
- A Novel
- By: Amy Lea
- Narrated by: Jennifer Aquino
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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For generations, the fortune-telling women in Lo Zhao-Jensen’s family have foreseen The One—the great loves of their lives—before ever meeting them. Except for Lo, who has zero psychic abilities. Just memories of old rom-coms and a lot of poor judgment when it comes to love. Until now. When Lo finally has the vision she’s been waiting for, her delighted aunties are convinced she’ll meet The One on her backpacking trip in Italy. Vero amore, here she comes.
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Fate or Something Like It
- By Krista Lee on 06-17-25
By: Amy Lea
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When We Grow Up
- A Novel
- By: Angelica Baker
- Narrated by: Imani Jade Powers
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Clare is supposed to be the grown-up one. Married to the love of her life, with a major deal for her first novel, she has everything she thought she wanted. So then why does it all feel so wrong? When she agrees to a weeklong vacation in Hawai'i with five of her oldest friends as they each approach thirty, she is hoping for an escape with the people who know her best. But when a terrifying news alert shatters their peace, it becomes harder to ignore how much the world has changed since they were teenagers.
By: Angelica Baker
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Tilda Is Visible
- A Novel
- By: Jane Tara
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Tilda Finch is a successful businesswoman, a mother to two wonderful adult daughters, and besides an unexpected divorce, she’s living a relatively happy life. Until she wakes up one morning and her finger seems to have disappeared. She thinks back to the kombucha she drank the night before—perhaps it was spiked? Studying herself in the mirror, she discovers one of her ears has also disappeared! She rushes to the doctor, who after a multitude of tests says she’s sorry to inform her that she has invisibility, a disorder that affects millions of women worldwide, mostly after the age of forty.
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A must read for women 50+
- By Jamie-lynn on 06-18-25
By: Jane Tara
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The Love Simulation
- By: Etta Easton
- Narrated by: Sisi Aisha Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Brianna Rogers has been told a time (or six) she needs to stop jumping into things head first. But when the principal rescinds his approval for a library upgrade, deciding to spend the money on a football field instead, she sees red. Literally. Brianna throws her hat in the ring and joins a team of teachers who will spend their summer in a Mars simulation. As the sister of an astronaut, this should be easy, right? What she didn’t count on was the last-minute addition to the team—Roman Major: science teacher, son of the principal, and too handsome for his own good.
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It was okay
- By I love these leggings. They fit me perfect!ly! on 06-18-25
By: Etta Easton
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I'm Not Scared
- By: Niccolò Ammaniti
- Narrated by: Dennis Olsen
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A widely acclaimed international best seller, I'm Not Scared combines a coming-of-age narrative with a satisfying and spine-tingling story of suspense. A sweltering heat wave hits a tiny village in Southern Italy, sending the adults to seek shelter, while their children bicycle freely throughout the countryside, playing games and getting into trouble. When the gang find a dilapidated farmhouse, nine-year-old Michele Amitrano makes a discovery so momentous he dare not tell a soul.
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Unabridged but Some Passages are Omitted
- By Anonymous User on 04-06-18
By: Niccolò Ammaniti
Like a warm and cozy hug
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Well what do you know about pod casts
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It’s fine for background listening but characters are thinly drawn and motivations don’t make sense from one moment to the next. The behind the scenes of podcast production was kind of interesting but would have been better if any character had a real love for audio storytelling.
Not her best
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Wonderful story
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Her best yet!
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Pronounced furniture as fun-it-ture is this a joke? A commentary on the audio industry?
Had to DNF - Terrible Narration
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Really needs professional narrator
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Listen to your Gut
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Narration added to the story
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Funny and Relatable Romance
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