Book Reviews

THE DEAD ROMANTICS BY ASHLEY POSTON // spoiler-free book review: you need this crazy romance book with ghostwriters that can see ghosts but also deals with grief in your life!!!

Today’s post is an incredibly exciting one because I finally get to cry about one of my favourite books this year!!! I read this one back in July actually, but ugh it was so good and I’m back to shove it down all of your throats *sighs*

Let’s just get into the screaming!!!!

Title: The Dead Romantics
Author: Ashley Poston
Page count: 368
Date published: 28 June 2022
Genre: Adult contemporary romance

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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.

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STAR RATING: (5 out of 5 stars)

This was so very very strange, peculiar, bizarre AND I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT!!!!!!!

Didn’t think I needed this literally batshit crazy paranormal romance in my life until this very day and I’m on Cloud Freaking Nine. Not exaggerating. I even told my dad about it because my mind was absolutely blown away by the craziness and in the best way possible. He thought it was genius too.

IM OBSESSED WITH GHOSTS NOW I DONT KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU!!!!

Ugh this book was honestly just everything I love and look for in romance and I’m so here for it and shall cry into oblivion now.

And bow down before the glorious mind of Ashley Poston who came up with this plot before I did. Simultaneously salty and very happy, a weird combination.

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Anyways, where do we start? Maybe just I technically did want to give this book 4.5 stars as I had some minor critiques, however, I don’t like being the star-rating grinch anymore (it’s extremely tiring) and I also saw reason so gave myself a big slap across the face. Helped a lot.

Now that we’ve cleared the air, I shall gush away. This book ticked absolutely all of the boxes and made me squeal with joy eeeeep *chefs kiss*

I’ve only ever read Geekerella by this author and if my memory serves me correctly, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the writing in that book. But this book surprised me to the moon because I LOVED it in this book. It was full of emotion and realness and also RIDICULOUSLY FUNNY WTF. I have a very niche sense of humour and tend to be very picky, but this was absolutely my kind of wit and I was so impressed. The book is crazy and the writing is crazy and it’s so very self-aware about those facts, which made me love it even more.

The characters were loveable and heartfelt and I instantly connected with our main character Florence. Obsessed with her name btw. Me and her had a connection and I loved it. And I loved the oldest sister discussions because SAME. IT WAS ALL SO GOOD. Lowkey, Florence was so very relatable and I’m only now seeing all the similarities and I am terrible sorry darling.

It’s a romance first and a comedy second, but I loved the comedy elements to it, which were intrinsically linked to the grief aspect, and I WANTED MORE. I wanted my heart to be punched over and over again, which in my opinion, it definitely did. Nonetheless, the sad tones were there and I just have no stamina when it comes to people discussing mourning loved ones. I am automatically a puddle of tears.

AND OF COURSE THE BLOODY ROMANCE. Weird and wonderful all at once and it was a grand old time. Ben is my new favourite fictional hero and I adored him to pieces. Flirting with literature is just DOING THINGS FOR ME THESE DAYS OMG!!!!! Ugh, we honestly love an obsessed, soft man and I would like to place an order of (1) Benji Andor *sighs in happiness* THEY WERE JUST EVERYTHING AND THE ENDING ENDED ME. In a good way, I won’t say more but you’ll be okay, I promise.

Don’t even get me started on “darling” and “ardently” IF YOU KNOW YOU KNOW

I don’t know how else to communicate that this book blew all of my expectations out of the water and has quickly become a favourite of the year. It ticked all of my boxes and I love being enveloped in my ghost romance. If you’re looking for an adult romance about a ghostwriter who can literally see ghosts, is dealing with grief, doesn’t believe in love, and her ghost editor is haunting her to finish her romance manuscript, then you’ve come to the right place. You want weird in the bestest way possible? Look no further THIS BOOK IS EVERYTHING AND MORE <3<3<3<3<3

 

“I’d always written how grief was hollow. How it was a vast cavern of nothing. But I was wrong. Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn’t the absence of everything you lost – it was the combination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.”

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“I began to realize that love wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t forever, either. It was something in between, a moment in time where two people existed at the exact same moment in the exact same place in the universe.”

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“Love wasn’t a whisper in the quiet night. It was a yelp into the void, screaming that you were here.”

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“Everything died, but pieces of it remained. Dad was in the wind because he breathed the same air that I breathed. Dad was a mark in history becuase he existed. He was part of my future because I still carried on.”

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“I can’t begin to express how much your book helped me. I could open it and get lost in your words, and in those moments, it felt like everything would be okay. So, thank you for giving me words when I didn’t think there were any left. I hope you never stop giving the world your words.”

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“Because loneliness was the kind of ghost that haunted you long after you were dead. It stood over your plot in the cemetery where a lone name sat carved in marble. It sat with your urn. It was the wind that carried your ashes when no one claimed your body.”

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“This is exhausting, he agreed softly. All of it. Pretending to be okay while the world changes around you and leaves you behind to sit with whatever loss you found.”

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“Because ghost stories were just love stories about here and then and now and when, about pockets of happiness and moments that resonated in places long after their era. They were stories that taught you that love was never a matter of time, but a matter of timing.”

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“I hated that I cried when I was angry, or upset, or annoyed. I hated that I cried at the slightest flux of emotional nuance. I hated how helpless I felt. I hated how I wanted to both march up to him and give him a fistful of my thoughts and run as far away from him as I could.”

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“In my experience, women with sharp tongues usually have soft lips.”

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“You don’t ever lose the sadness, but you learn to love it because it becomes a part of you, and bit by bit, it fades. And eventually, you’ll pick yourself back up and you’ll find that you’re okay. That you’re going to be okay. And eventually, it will be true.”


HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK? WHAT DID YOU THINK? DID YOU LOVE IT AS MUCH AS I DID? HAVE YOU READ ANYTHING ELSE FROM THIS AUTHOR? I’D LOVE TO KNOW!

Hi, I'm Ruby: chaotic mood reader, aspiring writer and lover of movies. If you want to know more, feel free to peruse xx

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