The Dead Romantics
Ashley Poston
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.
My Rating: 4.5 stars – rounded up to 5.
cover 4; characters 4; plot 4; pace 5; writing 4; enjoyment 5; cry*
My Review: I spent more time than I care to admit sobbing while reading THE DEAD ROMANTICS. Like, actual out loud sobbing.
That being said, this was a right book/right time situation and your milage may vary.
Firstly, I am in a hopelessly romantic mood this week. *GASP* I know. Jess having feelings is a 5 star review all on its own, but yeah. In the beginning of the book I can 100% identify with how Florence feels about love. Because that’s usually how I feel too. But this week. Idk, the universe is being weird. It’s that semi-annual event where I’m like “Should I make a dating profile?” The answer is always no. But I do think about it.
Also, this book deals very heavily with death and grief and being very chill about the idea of death AND seeing ghosts. Part of me feels like a true romance reader may not enjoy this book quite as much as I did for that reason. Because the romance definitely takes a back seat to all of the death. But here’s where the second half of the right book/right time comes in to play. My sister died earlier this year. And reading books with death has been kind of a no-go for me for a while.
There’s not a better book to have re-introduced me to death on this level. This family who has so been surrounded by death (the MC’s father was the mortuary director in their small town) who knows that it’s more about celebrating the life and the memories than about shutting down and forgetting to keep living. There was so much of this book that really resonated with me and how I’ve been feeling and just remembering that we’re not alone, ya know?
What hit me the hardest was Florence talking about how the wind blowing around her was made up of the air her father had breathed. It’s just this simple line that holds so much impact. Am I still crying while writing this review? Yes. Yes I am.
The romance, ah the romance. I loved Florence and Ben. They were adorable and mismatched in all of the best ways. He legit called her a chaos gremlin and girl, I can relate! Seeing them together, fictional as they are, gave me some kind of hope. And while I hate that for me, I love a book that makes me feel.
I don’t really have more coherent thoughts than this. There’s a million other things I could talk about but I can’t string the words together at the moment.
I received and eARC via Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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To see more of my reviews, head over to the reviews page on my website.