Sweet romance, quirky characters and setting - bit predictable but still thoroughly enjoyable. Will be putting out for sale in our store!

Oh my god I loved this book. The ending literally had me sobbing. I saw the twist coming a mile away, but I really enjoyed the journey to get there and am excited for more from this author.

3.5! This was overall very cute and enjoyable! Both Florence and Ben were lots of fun to read about, and their romance was cute. The family storyline was nice but Florence’s siblings annoyed me at times. The ending, however, was a bit disappointing. I wanted more from it, and felt like it was a lot more anticlimactic that it should’ve been. Still, a pretty cute book and I would check out more of Poston’s romances!

This is the weirdest, cutest, most fun book I've read in a long time. Also, it made me cry.

The Dead Romantics in some ways reminds me of The Haunting of Hill House, but replace the horror with comedy. Hear me out:
- Ghosts
- returning to a home/home town you fled from
- Family dynamics
- a family holding the funeral for their own family member
- Themes of grief
The key difference is that The Haunting of Hill House would follow a tear-jerking scene with a jump scare, and The Dead Romantics follows it with the most bizarre and hilarious situations.

But let's talk about the sense of humor this book has. I don't see it being perfect for everyone, but damn was it perfect for me. I was laughing out loud constantly while reading this. I have a collection of highlighted quotes that, out of context, make no sense, and barely even make sense in context. It's amazing.

The romance in this book is also absolutely incredible. I loved our two main characters, and I love how they interact together. Plus, throw in the angst with him being a ghost? Perfection.

But beyond the comedy and romance needed in a romcom, this book delves into family and grief. I didn't expect to cry when I picked this up, but I found myself fighting tears on multiple occassions. It's truly a beautiful meditation on loss that I know will stick with me.

I will be forcing everyone I know to read this book.

This book really took me by surprise in the best way. It was an unexpected love story that not only paid homage to romantic love, but also to the love between friends, the love between family, and the reluctant love you have for your hometown. The prose was beautiful and the characters were flawed and utterly lovable. It was funny and sweet, and as someone who saw a lot - A LOT - of myself in Florence, it gave me comfort and a glimmer of hope.

This is kind of book you want to reread when you feel sad, hopeless, overwhelmed, looking for a sign to promise you things will get better!
I love everything about this book! The smart, sarcastic tone of the author, the development of most adorable and awkward and so much lovable family members and execution of paranormal love story! Everything was amazing!
Let’s discuss the plot by starting Florence’s ultra eccentric family:
Florence Day’s family is not Six Feet Under’s Fisher Family or Adams Family with weird sense of fashion! They’re living in the small town of South, conducting funeral services at their parlor house as family business. They have a special way to accept the death and honor it with their respectful, professional way. They’re not the weird, haunted family living in a haunted mansion you get to beware of. They’re peculiar, entertaining, vivid and lively people who truly know the thin line between life and death!

Florence and her dad share special gift. Both of them can see death people and help them fulfill their unfinished business. But when thirteen years old Florence helped to solve a murder case by talking with the victim also the ghost, she turned into town’s weird kid, bullied by her own piers which forced to leave the town as soon as she’s applied for college!

She started to live in the Big Apple and never got a step into her hometown for years!

But now things get escalated in one day:
Firstly she couldn’t get extension for deadline of the book she’s ghostwriting because her new/ extra tall/ extra broad shouldered- ultra charming new editor Benji Andor she desires to climb on like a tree resists to give her another day and warns her if she/ the author she’s assisting doesn’t deliver the manuscript on time, he’ll start legal actions!

The guy doesn’t even know she’s the real writer of the book and she only has one night to finish the last chapter! But even though how hard she tries she cannot write it because she lost her belief in HEAs after the worst breakup changed her look at the entire love stories!

And before absorbing the news, she finds herself at a bohemian bar at her bestie, seeing her ex, bumping into Benji at the same time she finds out her dad is dead!

You think this book is about Felicia’s returning to hometown and confront with her past, rekindling her relationship with her family! Nope! Not at all! Because somebody knocks at their funeral parlor’s door and when Felicia opens it: she not only sees a ghost but she also sees the ghost of Benji standing in front of her, needing her help! What the hell!

Get ready to read a book about meet-cutes, high jinks, grave misunderstandings and conciliatory kisses about a boy who is a little ghostly and a girl who lives with the ghosts!

I think I don’t have enough vocabulary to express how much I loved this book! But I think it’s guaranteed its place at my most favorite top 5 romance reads of the year!

This is entertaining, emotional, spiritual, ghostly, lovely, addictive and I truly fell for it hard!

Millions of thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for sharing this amazing digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts. And thanks to Ashley Poston for writing this marvelous book!

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: Social media moots with this author
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
And remember: I am not here to judge your drag, I mean your book. Books are art and art is subjective. These are just my personal thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as broader commentary on the general quality of the work. Believe me, I have not enjoyed many an excellent book, and my individual lack of enjoyment has not made any of those books less excellent or (more relevantly) less successful.

This is an impressively weird book. I was trying to describe it to a friend, and I ended up with “Well, the heroine is a ghost writer who sees ghosts, and her family own a funeral home, and the love interest just died.” It’s also deeply, unabashedly and fearlessly earnest—which I think makes it, not quite a love it or hate it kind of experience, but at the very least the sort of thing that either works for you or doesn’t.

Mostly, it worked for me.

Before I get into it, though, I should just add, or at least clarify, that when I talk about The Dead Romantic’s earnestness, it’s a dimension of the text I legitimately admired, and I think it functions very successfully as a way to … omg is complexify a word? It shouldn’t be a word, it’s repulsive. But, like, functions very successfully as a way to add nuance and depth to a heroine who could otherwise get shoved into the quirky box and left there. Quirky heroines are kind of a complicated trope in the genre that I don’t feel super qualified to comment on. I think they can be very successful, in that they represent a subversion of the massively male-gazey manic pixie dream girl thing, as well as sort of pushing back against conventional ideas of how women should behave or how female characters should be written. But they can also end up Too Much territory (clown shoes on the wall has sort of become a personal shorthand for this) or overlap with Not Like Other Girls which is a problematic trope all of its own.

For me, what’s interesting about Florence is that while she has elements in common with the Quirky Heroine, in that when we first meet her, she’s wearing an over-sized tweed coat, hasn’t washed her hair, and is taking a cactus to the professional meeting she’s running late for, and her family background is this whole Six Feet Under funeral home scenario, but actually she’s not really quirky. She’s just painfully, awkwardly, unglamorously earnest. And I mean that in a good way. Because you can’t write un-earnestly about being earnest, and we live in a world that does not—as a general rule—value or celebrate earnestness.

All of which said, one of the difficulties of earnestness is that it’s sort of like trying to calibrate your toaster knob (not a euphemism). In the same way it’s borderline impossible to strike the right balance between burned-to-a-crisp and still-just-bread, the emotional space between heart-strikingly earnest and a little bit cringe seems infinitesimally and unpredictably small. Also, let me make very clear, very personal. So while there were elements of earnestness in this book that really got me in my squishy feelings, there were also moments that did the exact opposite (like the public confrontation Florence gets into with her small town nemesis where, totally unprompted, Florence is all "I forgive you" and I'm all "oh no, must you be so toe-curlingly American"). But, as you can see from that example, this very much a Your Mileage May Vary type reaction.

Just to give a bit of context, the deal here—as I mentioned above—is that the heroine of The Dead Romantics, Florence Day, is the ghost writer for a famous romance writer. As is required of a romcom heroine, she fled her small American town for the big city. Her family runs the town funeral town and are generally accounted a bit strange, albeit in a benign way. This all changed for Florence, though, when she helped the ghost of a thirteen-year-old boy solve his own murder and, suddenly, she was bullied as a weirdo, an attention seeker, and a liar. Her ghost writing (oh do you see, she sees ghosts, she is a ghost writer…), too, has recently hit a bit of a snag because, following a disaster break-up with a man she thought was The One, she no longer believes in love and, consequently, can’t write the romance she’s contracted to. On top of which, her old editor has recently retired, having been replaced with a hot guy. And THEN (wow, this feels like a lot) Florence’s dad dies, requiring her to return to the small town that exiled her, make peace with her (very loving) family and fulfil her dead father’s entirely unreasonable funeral requests. Seriously, the dude wants, like, Elvis and a thousand wildflowers organised by colour, and God knows what else. Obviously these are all carefully calculated acts of logistical tyranny to allow Florence to experience moments of emotional significance, and they are clearly supposed to be about helping his family come to terms with his loss, rather than a list of arbitrary demands for someone too dead to appreciate them. But sheesh. Given how fucking awful funerals are to arrange, I don’t know how I would feel about my legacy to my loved ones being “catharsis through administration.” Oh, and the hot editor guy was hit by a car and is now haunting Florence. They develop feelings.

Okay, so that is definitely a lot. But it does work, despite a touch of disconnect between where the book starts and where it ends up going. There’s a fair bit of publishing shade thrown here, which I very much appreciated in a popcorn.gif kind of way. For example, Florence’s first book, a romance, written under her own name, basically didn’t sell, and the house blamed her and dropped her (too real, man, too real) and I’m pretty sure her horrendous ex-boyfriend is a sort of straight Dan Mallory. He doesn’t leave cups of urine in his boss’s office (as far as we know) but he lives his life as a trail of lies and pitches himself to literary fame by co-opting a woman’s story. More seriously, though, The Dead Romantics has powerful things to say about grief and complicated things to say about family, both of which I am very here for, and the romance with dead hot editor is sweet and heartfelt, despite what felt to me like a rather shaky beginning.

I think the way the relationship between Florence and Ben (I should probably stop calling him Hot Editor Guy) is initially established was the main factor in my sense that the beginning of the novel is the teeniest bit misaligned from the rest. This isn’t a big deal, I hasten to add, but you know when it feels like the edges of things don’t quite match up? Basically Florence and Ben have their meeting, and Florence is all like “can I write a romance with a sad ending” (because … she’s a romance lover who genuinely wants to challenge the one central tenant of the genre? Girl.) and Ben, very sensibly, is like fuck no, and I want the manuscript tomorrow, and they’re suddenly In Conflict, and then Florence’s bestie drags her to something that basically seems to be The Moth and while she’s running away from her ex, who is about to do a bit, she runs into Ben, who happens to be there, and they randomly start making out in an alley? And, honestly, it all feels very compressed and out of nowhere: they were literally just having an argument about the HEA in romance while he was setting her an impossible deadline and now they’re at the same event on the same evening? Plus, at the point they’re snogging in the alley, she doesn’t know he knows that she’s the ghost writer (she poses as the romance author’s assistant) but SHE knows she’s the ghost writer, and we find out later, HE knows too … so what are you both doing right now? You can’t French your editor and your editor shouldn’t be Frenching you. I mean, right? Surely? There’s all sorts of power dynamics in play there, that neither one of them even stops to consider, although it quickly becomes irrelevant due to death of one party. Although that strikes me as a shaky reasoning for embarking on a lawsuit-enticing relationship with a professional colleague: "oh it'll be fine if one of us dies."

Retrospectively I do wonder if this scene in the alley was to establish a grounding of physical desire between Florence and Ben, given he’s a ghost and they can’t touch each other for the rest of the book. Which is, you know, a bit depressing, to say nothing of allocentric. Not that being ace is equivalent to being dead, but I think the assumption that touch (with an implication of sexual touch) is unquestionably integral to a functional relationship is problematic on principle. And, actually, there’s a moment later in the book where they discuss the reality of being in a long-term relationship where one of you is dead, and lack of touch/sex wasn’t, at that point, treated as any sort of major factor or deal breaker (which, again, I thought was nice: because while I do think touch can be an important facet of intimacy I don’t think it’s the be all and end all of everything).

I also really wish that Ben’s consent had been considered even a little bit relevant to the alleysnog. It turns out he really does want to be alleysnogged because he alleysnogs Florence after she’s alleysnogged him. But at the point she alleysnogs him, she has no notion he’s even interested in her (he could be gay, she might not be his type, she’s a WRITER HE’S WORKING WITH) let alone up for an alleysnog. But she just plants one on him regardless and while she apologises afterwards she’s more focused on herself (“I don’t usually do this”) than the reality that she could have just sexually assaulted someone? Even tall hot editors get to consent y’know.

Basically, this whole alleysnog business felt odd and uncomfortable to me, to the point that it felt almost like it had been jammed in at a later date or left in after subsequent editing rounds, especially because they barely mention it when Ben pops up as a ghost. And there’s a similarly out-of-place feeling scene when, post death, Ben sees Florence in the shower, and they’re both super embarrassed, and he blurts out that she has perfect breasts. And I think it’s meant to be cute in some way, or prove he’s attracted to her (which is already obvious) but it just makes him come across like an absolute arse. If you non-consensually witness a naked person, you apologise and leave quickly, you don’t take a moment to rate their body parts no matter how flustered you are or how much you like the body parts in question: “Oops, sorry I walked in on you, and now you’re screaming and trying to cover yourself, but I’ve just got to say: gorgeous vulva. The way your pubic hair frames the shape of it? Beautiful. Love it. A+. Sorry again.”

It's sections like this that make me ask myself who didn’t trust who when these scenes were conceived: did the editor or the author not trust readers to believe in the relationship if they hadn’t been witness explicitly to physical desire, or did the editor not trust the author with the characters, or did the author not trust their own characters? If I may take a moment to be uncomfortably earnest: someone should have trusted more. For my money (and admittedly I’m only one person) the relationship is tender and genuine, and there’s so much emotional tension around the fact that, y’know, BEN IS DEAD that forcing this specifically body-related UST into the story felt blunt in a way it didn’t have to.

Urk, this feels like a lot complaining. When actually I really enjoyed the book. I loved Florence and Ben together (random acts of alleysnog aside), and I loved Florence’s family, who are all well-articulated in their individual weirdness. Despite Dad’s Unreasonable Funeral (which, let's very clear, is a me problem, not a book problem), I also loved what The Dead Romantics had to say about grief and love and stories, and earnestness got me in the feels a whole bunch of times. I mean, just look at this swoonful piece of writing:

"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 at the exact same moment in the exact same place in the universe."

Mwah. Just mwah.

The book has such a lot going on, thematically and in terms of actual happenings, that it sometimes feels a little over-burdened by itself. For example, at Dad’s Unreasonable Funeral, Florence reads a letter he’s written to his family. Except she doesn’t read it to the reader. She reads it at the funeral and narrates what it contained. And I never quite worked out how I felt about this: whether it felt right that it remained private the family, or that I was sad that I didn’t get to hear her father “speak”. Despite being dead, he gets a lot of textual attention, so he’s very much a person, rather than an abstract or a plot point (and he does not, at any point, show up as a ghost--except that letter kind of IS his ghost) but death and stories are two of the book’s major themes. I think getting to hear his letter would have brought these together beautifully at the novel’s emotional climax. But I’m definitely not saying A Wrong Choice was made here. I can absolutely see why this scene happens the way it does. I can just imagine an alternative that could have worked too.

I’m starting to realise I’ve got a laundry list of things I could pick at, but they’re all pretty personal to me and my tastes (like where my own earnestness line is drawn, and why does everybody in this universe read paper books? Does nobody own an e-reader? They’re so much more convenient) and, ultimately, they kind of don’t matter. Because, however I felt about whatever, the book worked for me far more than it didn’t work. It’s an ambitious, unusual romance that is very much committed to telling the story it wants to tell in the way it wants to tell it. And, above all else, I admire it for that and I’m glad it exists in the genre, quietly expecting you to believe in ghosts, and then completely re-defining what we expect a ghost story to mean.

The premise of this sounded so amazing but it just didn't deliver for me. I love ghosts and I love romance and this didn't have enough of either. And this feels a little petty, but I dropped one full star for the egregious use of italics (multiple times! on almost every single page!).

I rarely give a novel 5 stars, but I absolutely loved The Dead Romantics!

Florence is a ghostwriter for a major romance author, and she is NOT going to meet her deadline. Her first meeting with her hunky new editor is to beg for an extension, which he is unable to give. While trying not to panic over her employment situation, Florence receives a phone call telling her that her father has passed away unexpectedly. She returns to the small town where she grew up as the daughter of the local funeral home director. Later that evening she answers the door to find the ghost of her new editor.

This was not a romance in the traditional sense, although there WAS a romance involved. The story was centered around moving through grief and celebrating a life well lived. I cried several times while reading this, laughed out load several times as well. Highly recommended!

This is easily one of the best books I read this year. The premise of this book was so unique and not like anything else I’ve read this year. The story of Florence Day and Benji Andor is so heartfelt and sweet. I absolutely loved everything about Florence’s character. And her family?! Some of the best written side characters i’ve seen. I adored them. Now, Ben was something. He is a gem. ***spoilers*** I definitely could see the ending a million miles away but I didn’t mind that. The slow burn made everything worth it. Their love story didn’t feel like insta love despite them only spending a week together. For lack of a better word, they felt like soulmates. The banter between them was natural. This is definitely a book i’d recommend to people if they want a romance verging on rom com. Thank you Berkely and Net Galley for providing me with an arc!

This will be up on pop-culturalist closer to the release date. I absolutely love Ashley Poston’s books and this one was also good! The Dead Romantics follows Florence Day who is a ghostwriter by day for one of the most popular romance writer. Unfortunately, after a breakup she no longer believes in love and finds it difficult to write. She thinks her career might be over when she gets a call from her family asking her to come help bury her father.

DNF. This will be my third weekend trying to get through this and I just can’t do it. Quitting at 50%. Boring and repetitive. Too many tropes in one story. There MC don’t return to her southern awful hometown in 10 years because they ran her out, yet she comes back and everyone is Hallmark-kind to her. She doesn’t believe in any romance anymore because she had her heart broken ONCE (by a complete psychopath who threw up plenty of red flags). Overall, the place was just too slow for me. I did enjoy the family funeral home backstory.

If every romance I read this year has this energy, I will buy myself a baby goat next year. No but really.

This was such a cute romance but it was also so much more. The family themes, the forgiveness, the threads of fate. Chefs kiss.

Ok let's talk about that romance because hello it's in the title. Benji is such a sweet little cinnamon roll and deserves all the happiness. Florence herself is such a relatable character. Aren't we all running from our ghosts ?
Haha but seriously I love how fate played a part in this book because I myself truly believe I was fated to meet my husband (we passed by each other in life at least 5 times before we met.)


Florence has the greatest family. I really want an Alice book because she's very much the best thing ever and also, Rose the greatest friend we all desperately need. Carver and Nicki brought such a fun and sunshine side to the dynamic.

I truly enjoyed the paranormal aspects of this because it reminded me of Ghost Whisperer and I miss that show so damn much.

The one thing I could've done without was all the name dropping of other authors but that is just a personal preference and didn't affect the rating I gave.

I loved the cheesy chapter titles! That one scene, you know which. And, all the beautiful descriptions and flowers writing I truly felt like I was there in the small town with these characters.

This was so good! I cried and laughed through the whole thing. I loved the characters and how they grew and the ending was so fulfilling.

The Dead Romantics is an enjoyable and inventive take on the meet-cute, star-crossed rom-com that will please readers of romance who enjoy quirky stories. Vaguely reminiscent of the read-alike Marc Levy's If It Were True, which was made into a movie, the plot involves a ghostwriter who sees ghosts, a funeral for a wacky funeral director, and a romance complicated by a tragic accident.. Fans of Six Feet Under will appreciate the "daily life in the funeral home" setting, but the warmth and small-town spirit counteracts the dark humor much more than in that television show. At heart, it's a classic romance, but there are enough unique elements in the story to keep it fresh and fun.

This book is funny, heartwarming and romantic. I loved the paranormal element with the ghosts. I don't read many romcoms , but I'm glad I gave it a chance. I very much enjoyed it.

Received an ARC from Netgalley for an honest opinion.
I really liked this whole story and the whole idea of this story. The characters are well fleshed out I think, and you really get to know them and you really like them. That being said I do have a problem.
The character Dana. The main character has been gone from this town for 10 years, yet she knows what pronouns that this Dana uses. And this wasn't even a thing 10 years ago. It feels forced, like the book editor said oh you have to add this. I didn't really think that it added anything to the story, as both of her siblings are gay so that makes that crowd happy. Please don't hate on me.
I absolutely loved those plot twists at the end and did not see them coming! That really makes the whole book and story.

This was absolutely amazing!!

I loved the whole thing. Florence and her family, Rose and Ben, yes all of the quirky, fun, chaos of the book!!!

This book romance novel was surely one that got the emotions flowing. The main character Florence struggles with dealing with loss, betrayal, and the possible reality that she might not get the fairy tale ending she has always believed would be hers; true love just like her parents had. She is supposed to be an amazing ghost writer for a famous romance author but she can no longer see what she has always felt so deeply would be hers. While reconnecting with family, due to the passing of her father, and dealing with childhood trauma associated with the gift that she can see ghosts, it is hard not to emphasize with Florence and to be a part of her character development. In an age where dating is tough, this book was extremely relatable. It flowed extremely well and I could not wait to find out what happens in the end.

Florence is a ghost writer for a famous romance novelist. She has an awkard meeting with her new handsome editor Benji and later shares a kiss with him outside a club. Then she rushes to her hometown when her father passes away. Her family owns a funeral home and she inherited her father's s ability to see ghosts to help them move on. Back in her hometown, she sees the ghost of Benji and is shocked to find out her was in an auto accident. As she tries to help Benji move on, she begins to fall in love with him. While I enjoyed the unique story concerning a funeral home and a woman who could see ghosts, I had a few questions that irked me. First as a bestselling ghostwriter to a bestselling novelist, how is she barely scraping by financially? Also I wanted to know more about the murder she helped solve when she was 13. The town was dismissive of her seeing a ghost who helped her find his body and solve his murder and is the reason she hasn't returned home in a decade yet the case was barely mentioned.