Hey all, Sam here.
I meant to have this post up yesterday, but it took a little more time to recover from the weekend at the convention and the travel afterwards than I would have thought. So, happy late book birthday to today’s review, and let’s not waste any more time with an intro, and jump into it.
A disillusioned millennial ghostwriter who, quite literally, has some ghosts of her own, has to find her way back home in this sparkling adult debut from national bestselling author Ashley Poston.
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 Thoughts
Rating: 4 stars
Ashley Poston is one of many authors on my list of authors I pay attention to for releases, and I’ve loved her YA books, so hearing about her adult debut…I was intrigued. Plus, come on, it’s a book about an author…who can see ghosts. I’ve actually read quite a few books this year that are about writers, editors, publishers, etc, and they’ve been pretty entertaining.
This was a good read. I enjoyed the time it took me to finish it, and it didn’t take me long, just a couple of days because of other obligations and such. The story was easy to read and follow, and the characters and set up were interesting.
Being introduced to Florence, and the Day family, and the citizens of her hometown, really helped to expand the story. There were some fun characters in this town and family, and it would be interesting to follow some of them in future stories. And the chemistry between Florence and her editor was clear even before he showed up as a ghost after she went home, which obviously made the romance one to be intrigued by. Plus with the inability to touch and everything, it only increased the longing and such. That development of the relationship, and watching Florence navigate dealing with this ghost in particular while also dealing with being home for the first time in a long time (and all the memories that go along with it),
My biggest issue, and it’s not even really an issue, is that I knew what the twist was very very early on. Why? Because it feels more like a common trope when it comes to ghost stories at this point. And I kept reading because I hoped that my thoughts would end up being wrong (and because I was enjoying the story aside from the one thought)…but I wasn’t wrong at all.
So that was a bit disappointing, but sometimes stories have predictable elements to them. It doesn’t make them bad stories. In fact, sometimes I just really enjoy a story that is easy to figure out and to follow. In fact, a lot of romances all follow the same basic plot and structure. I still read a whole lot of romance stories because there is something comforting in the familiarity of it all, in the knowledge that everything will work out and the relationship will end in a happily ever after (or at least a happily for now)
All in all though, I enjoyed the book, and I look forward to seeing what Ashley Poston comes out with next.
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This book came out yesterday, and you can snag your own copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-million, Book Depository, or your local indie bookstore.
Thanks for stopping by and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.
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