Ashley Poston writes stories about love and friendship and ever afters. A native to South Carolina, she now lives in a small grey house with her sassy cat and too many books. You can find her on the internet, somewhere, watching cat videos and reading fanfiction. You can find her online at AshPoston.com, or on Instagram @HeyAshPoston. You can find more of my reviews of her work here.
Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem: After a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. It's as good as dead. When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won't give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father. For ten years, she's run from the town that never understood her, and even though she misses the sounds of a warm Southern night and her eccentric, loving family and their funeral parlor, she can't bring herself to stay. her father's gone, yet everything feels the same. And she hates it. Until she finds a ghost standing at the funeral parlor's front door, just as broad and infuriatingly handsome as ever, and he's just as confused about why he's there as she is. Romance is most certainly dead . . . but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she's ever known about love stories.
Very rarely do I find a book where I feel like the narrator's fears and inner turmoil so accurately reflects my own. I quite literally felt like Poston was holding up a mirror to all my thoughts, which made this book incredibly trippy but also so gratifying to read. Poston is balancing a lot of heavy topics in this novel—grief, loss, love, legacy, family—and yet, it's such a quick read because Florence's inner monologue is light, hopeful, and relatable. Like Ali Hazelwood said, this book is just super hopeful. It makes for a really satisfying, wholesome read.
In a lot of ways, though, this really isn't your typical romance. Obviously, ghost love interest aside, there's a lot about Poston's novel that makes it really stand out. The first thing for me was how the novel was written in first-person, with no male POV. This was done for some obvious reasons (once you finish, you'll know), but I also think it was done deliberately so that Poston can really spend some time grappling with those heavy topics, and create meaning out of one woman's experiences, rather than trying to split time between two characters' heads. This novel also sort of has a mystery component, and is very tongue-in-cheek about being a romance novel. All the shout-outs to Christina Lauren and other romance giants were so fun, and really made this book feel like a product of the modern explosion of contemporary romance readers.
And of course, I feel like I would be remiss not to mention the ghost part of this novel. I smiled at all of the ghost jokes (how can you not?), but the ghostly element is exactly what makes this book so unique right now. While I sort of had some inkling as to what would happen (there are times when one really shouldn't read the acknowledgements section before reading the book...old habits die hard, I guess), Poston still kept me guessing up until the very end. I still felt surprised in that waiting room with Florence, and desperately hopeful in the publishing house. So, even if you think you know exactly what this book is, trust me when I say that it will still find some way to surprise you, and to weasel a way in right to your heart.
While for so many this may be their first Ashley Poston novel, there are still so many books of hers to explore, and hopefully more to come! You can find her online at AshPoston.com, or on Instagram @HeyAshPoston.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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