The Dead Romantics

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Manufacturer: Ashley Poston
Brand: Paranormal Romance, Romance
Brew: Paperback
Steeping Time: 368 pages
Tea Service: Best Friend Recommendation
Strength:

Synopsis: 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 sound of a warm Southern night and her eccentric, loving family and their funeral parlor, she can’t bring herself to stay. Even with her father gone, it feels like nothing in this town has changed. 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.

Romance novels are not my usual reading choice. But I’ll recommend this book till the day I die.

My best friend shoved The Dead Romantics into my hands a few weeks ago when I came over to visit, and I begrudgingly took it home to read. I didn’t even read the synopsis, I just dove in. Might as well get it over with, was my main thought. Spice may not be my jam, but she got me with a few key things that I’d enjoy, such as a writer as the main character, ghosts, a hint of a murder, and a funeral parlor as one of the main settings. She also promised that there was hardly any spice at all—a win-win.

The first thing that sold me on The Dead Romantics was the writing style. It was easy and flowed so well, making the pages fly by without me even realizing it. I did roll my eyes at the inevitable hotness of the new editor, but I kept reading, determined to get to the spooky ghost bits. And I’m glad I did because this book turned out to be one of my favorites of the year.

I loved Florence as a main character, and I related easily to her.

Not that we have a lot in common, but she’s written so well that it’s hard not to connect with her. She is vulnerable and broken, just like the rest of us are at one time or another. I loved how we got to know her one layer at a time. Again, it’s written so well that you don’t even notice the layers being pulled back. The Day family as a whole felt real and genuine, and I enjoyed getting to know each and every one of them. Watching them interact was so natural that it was easy to forget that they were fictional characters. I also adored their dark sense of humor, which felt fitting and was also hilarious.

And let’s not gloss over Ben, the hot-but-dead editor.

He is another well-crafted character that I fell in love with very quickly. Just as with Florence, we get to slowly unwrap the layers of his story. The dynamic between Ben and Florence is quick and fun while also underlined with a more serious current of death, sadness, and opportunities lost. Watching them grow and learn together was such a joy.

The storyline was a bit predictable in certain areas, but in the best ways possible. The Dead Romantics gave me exactly what I wanted with a few twists along the way. It is one of those books that delivers precisely as desired, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. The pace is pretty quick and flows very well. There was never a moment where I was bored or felt that it lagged. I simply craved more and more and more of the story. I had a tough time putting The Dead Romantics down!

While the pace is quick and funny, and the reading is easy and gentle, the book’s actual content is quite heavy.

I mean, death courses through every inch of The Dead Romantics. It’s even in the title. Ashley Poston has done a fantastic job tackling such a deep topic with incredibly light and airy prose. The writing is simple. It’s easy to connect with. And that’s what packs the real punch here. Expect a beautiful story that will break your heart and make you face some of the biggest fears surrounding death. And then expect the same story to knit your heart back together again and fill it with love and laughter. The Dead Romantics is a rollercoaster of a book, but a ride I’ll happily take again and again.

Have you read The Dead Romantics? Leave a comment and let me know what you thought about it! Want to read it for yourself? Click here to get a copy of your own.
Cheers,
Lydia