A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston – review

Published by HQ

Publication date – 27 June 2024

Source – review copy

Eileen Merriweather loves a good love story. The fictional kind, anyway. After all, imaginary men don’t break your heart.

That’s why she’s so excited for her annual book club retreat – instead, when her car breaks down en route, Eileen finds herself in Eloraton. A town where every meet is cute, the rain always comes in the afternoon, and the bookshop is always curated with impeccable taste.

It feels too good to be true … because Eloraton is the setting of her favourite romance series. And Eileen is sure she must be here to bring the town its storybook ending.

But there’s one character she can’t place. The grumpy bookshop owner with mint-green eyes, and an irritatingly sexy mouth. He does not want Eileen to finish this story, but how else can she find her happily-ever-after?

Eileen, or Elsy to her friends, is on her way to a week’s getaway with her book club. Except none of them can attend so it’s a week alone feeling sorry for herself. Then her car breaks down in a small town and she’s stuck. As she looks at her new surroundings she finds them vaguely familiar. And then she realises she’s at Quixotic Falls. A place that only exists in her favourite book series by Rachel Flowers. All the people in town are characters she recognises. Except for the one she nearly runs over. Anders. Who is not pleased to see her arrive in town.

Now I love books about books. So a book about a woman who finds herself in the fictional town from her favourite series. Yes please!

I loved the play on literary tropes. The fact that secondary characters have little to say over that which the author had wrote for them. That scenes and items mentioned in passing were not fully formed, from menus without meal options written out to slightly blurred buildings at the end of town.

There’s a Groundhog Day feel, with the characters stuck in a loop, left with their stories unfinished when Rachel Flowers died, be that a little girl who needs her favourite book fixing to a seemingly haunted toilet. But when Elsy arrives, despite the best efforts of Anders, she begins the happy endings of the residents of Quixotic Falls.

All the romance tropes are here, purposefully. Grumpy to sunshine, enemies to lovers, book boyfriends galore, friendships made in days and people falling in love within the week.

Elsy learns the truth about herself as she spends her week in a fictional town. How her seemingly easy to please persona was perhaps more of a defence mechanism. How she can be alone and thrive, how her career may not be the one. As she spends time with another person’s creations she learns how to re-write her own life.

A Novel Love Story was a book I sunk into and got lost in. The reader may know what will happen with Elsy and Anders but the joy from romance books is the journey, not the destination. And this journey was a joy-ride.

You can buy a copy of the book here.

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