ARC Review: The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

The Dead Romantics
Author: Ashley Poston
Publication: Berkley (June 28, 2022)

Description: 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: Florence Day is a ghostwriter for an immensely popular romance author who has to deal with some ghosts of her own, both figurative and literal. After a betrayal by her lover, Florence no longer believes in romance and is having trouble finishing her current romance, the last in her contract, despite a number of contract extensions.

When she meets Benji Andor who is her new editor after the previous editor's retirement, she is told that there will be no more extensions and the book is due almost immediately. However, a phone call from her mother telling her that her beloved father has died from a sudden heart attack, sends her rushing back home to the town she fled right after high school graduation. She's stayed away for ten years. 

Dealing with her own grief and that of her mother, brother and sister would be hard enough, but then the ghost of Benji Andor appears with issues of his own. Florence has seen ghosts since she was a child. In fact, seeing ghosts and helping one find his killer when she was thirteen and the harassment and bullying that followed, were the main reasons she left home never to return. 

This was an engaging story about grief which was also a romance. The love between her parents and their love for their children infuse this book. I enjoyed watching Florence's attitude about love and romance evolve through the course of this story. 

People looking for a unique sort of romance with wonderful, quirky characters will greatly enjoy this book. 

Favorite Quote:

Standing there in the middle of the dandelion field, looking up into Ben's soft ocher eyes, 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 in the exact same place in the universe. 

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.