A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston
SYNOPSIS
Eileen “Elsy” Merriweather loves to get lost in a good happily ever after. The fictional kind, anyway. Because at least imaginary men don’t leave you at the altar. She feels safe in stories. At home in books. Which might be why she’s so set on going to her book club’s annual retreat this year - she needs good friends, cheap wine, and grand romantic gestures - no matter what.
When her car unexpectedly breaks down on the way, she finds herself stranded in a quaint town that seems like it’s right out of a novel…
Because it is.
This place can’t be real, and yet… she’s here, in Eloraton, the town from her favorite romance series, where the candy store’s honey taffy is always sweet, the local bar’s burgers are always a little burnt, and rain always comes in the afternoon. It feels like home. It’s perfect - and perfectly frozen, trapped in the late author’s last, unfinished story.
Elsy is sure that must be why she’s here: to help bring the town to its storybook ending.
Except there is a character in Eloraton whom she can’t place - a grumpy bookstore owner with mint-green eyes, an irritatingly sexy mouth, and impeccable taste in novels. And he does not want her finishing this book.
Which is a problem, because Elsy is beginning to think the town’s happily ever after just might be intertwined with her own.
~~~~~
Ashley Poston is an auto-buy author for me and, although this book came through on cute coziness, it fell a little short for me on the depth of emotion and grief I’ve come to expect from this author. I love the mix of romcom with magical realism that Poston has in her books as well as a hint of the macabre. This book still had a lot of those elements but I just felt very isolated from these main characters. I think one of the issues is that, in this fictional town, all the people are fictional. So how do you get attached to characters you aren’t sure are real in the story? I did really enjoy, however, the idea of getting to spend time in your favourite fictional world, literally, when going through a tough time. This book took escapism to an entirely new level.
The setting as both a hit and a miss for me. I loved the Storybrooke vibes the entire town gave off, I’m 100% convinced that fictional town was the inspiration for Eloraton. It had all the campy-ness I love in a good romance and very loveable characters, on the surface. However, I did feel that we got most of our viewpoint of the town from our MC explaining how she imagined each place when she read the book. It was a lot more “tell” than it was “show” which I think is a pitfall of basing a story within a fictional town, it just gets too meta.
The entire book had a very solid concept but given just how meta the plot was, I felt like there were too many plot holes and unanswered questions by the end which left me unsatisfied. How did the place appear? Tell us more of the characters’ backstory so we know as much as our main character knows. How did the real world just conveniently carry-on? The accident on how the author died contradicted itself in multiple places throughout the book, etc. The love also didn’t feel like a natural progression. They instantly hated each other and then after 2 short words of kindness, were instantly into each other. There was no slow growth there. I felt the main character was more focused on everyone else’s life for it to make sense that she falls so hard, so fast. And, without giving too much away, for all that these two main characters confess to each other throughout the story, the third act angst made zero sense. The decisions made there felt very out of character and undid most of the growth throughout the book.
Now, all that said, I still really enjoyed reading this book. It was a great, sweet, escape during a really tumultuous time in my life. It was very much a book for book lovers. Who wouldn’t want a few days to live with their favourite book characters and see their world? Elsy got to live our dreams and honestly reacted as I’m sure many of us book lovers would react in the same situation. I also found Elsy’s personal journey something that was easy to relate to. Being at that age between 20s and 30s when all your friends are in VERY different stages of life from still partying to having their third child, it can be a weird time to figure out what you want out of life and have the courage to follow your dreams and desires. I definitely have more of a soft spot for Elsy than I do some of Poston’s other main characters and it was a delight to get to know her.
Overall, the book was enjoyable. Not as deep or soul destroying as I’d expected or wanted but it was a good escape and a fun plot. I gave this book 4 stars because I do really just love Poston’s writing style. If you’re looking for a book that gives you some of the same feels as The Seven Year Slip but with a little less angst, this is the one!