[ARC Review] A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston

PUBLISHER'S SYNOPSIS: Eileen 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 a book. At home. Which might be why she’s so set on going her annual book club retreat this year—she needs good friends, cheap wine, and grand romantic gestures—no matter what.

But when her car unexpectedly breaks down on the way, she finds herself stranded in a quaint town that feels like it’s right out of a novel…

Because it is.  

MY THOUGHTS: Could this be the first Ashley Poston novel I've read that I didn't immediately fall in love with the main couple? Don't get me wrong, this was still very much a four star read for me, but I just didn't get any connection between Elsy and Anders until the very end. I know part of that boils down to the fact that the life Elsy was living in her fictional town was just that - fictional. It truly took Elsy living in a fictional world, straight out of her favorite novels, to wake up and face the reality of her actual life. There is great commentary in here about living and moving on from heartbreak, both from Elsy and Anders's backstories, but the romance in this book did not do it for me. 

Finding your way back to yourself has been a consistent theme for at least one main character in Poston's most recent novels. In A Novel Love Story, we see both Anders and Elsy stall out after heartbreak and escape to a place where time stands still and broken hearts have time to heal. However, while this escape gives Eileen a purpose, it only gives Anders a place to hide from the world. 

Fiction means different things to different people; no two readers read the same book, and a book can easily change meaning for a person depending on where they're at in their life. I appreciated that those thoughts held true for our main characters, bringing a bit of real-life book magic into this fictional world. I think, though, this book was missing the extra surrealism of both The Dead Romantics and The Seven Year Slip. 

I love the idea of escaping into a book - quite literally in Elsy's case - and this plot sounded so magical to me when I first read it. However, the actual action of the plot fell a bit short for me, and I would've loved to see more character development outside of describing Anders's minty green eyes or Elsy being a hypocrite on more than one occasion. 

A Novel Love Story remains a solid four stars for me. I love the premise and how it was developed, but I couldn't bring myself to love the main characters like I have in previous Poston stories. 

[Thank you to Berkley Romance for providing an advanced copy of this title for review.]

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Release date: 6/25/24

Format: eARC

eARC provided via: NetGalley