REVIEW: The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

OUR REVIEW

 The Dead Romantics, on my initial perusal, isn't my usual read but something about the synopsis piqued my curiosity so I decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did. The story of Florence and Benji is so wonderfully unlikely and yet so addictive that even if you don't normally read a novel that requires that you suspend belief about ghosts, you willing do so and you love every second of it. 

Florence comes from a family who runs a funeral home and they're every bit as wonderful and quirky as you'd want them to be. She's escaped their small town to write in NYC (and to escape the unwanted and mean spirited attention of her peers...because of a ghost story) which is how she meets Benji. He's her new editor who refuses her request for a deadline extension...one that she's pushed back quite a few times. Her night only becomes worse when she discovers her dad is gone and she must get home to help bury him and navigate a hometown she hasn't been in in over ten years. You can only imagine her dread and then her surprise when Benji shows up as a ghost.

While their story is unlikely, it's so much fun to read. Both of them have interesting personalities that compliment each other, if for no other reason than for how different they are. She's free spirited, he's a little more uptight; she seems to be in avoidance mode, he tends to be more direct but it works. As she works through her grief, he does too. As she remembers what she loved about love, he also learns some things about himself when it comes to love and relationships. As the novel and their relationship progresses, you can't help but root for them.

While the big reveal wasn't all that much of a surprise to me, I didn't care because I loved all the moments leading up to it. The execution of the funeral, her fun family, the interesting townspeople, and both Florence and Benji's backstories all made this such a fun read; I really hated saying goodbye to them at the end. 

BUY IT HERE.

BLURB:

The New York Times Bestseller and Good Morning America Book Club Pick!

"I LOVED this book! ...Funny, breathtaking, hopeful, and dreamy.”—Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis

"One of the Summer's Hottest Reads"—Entertainment Weekly

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.