My heart was absolutely shattered by this book. The fascinating intersection between love and grief in the wake of a devastating death, set against the backdrop of a family funeral home, was way more than I had bargained for. I was hooked by "I'm in love with a ghost," but oh boy is this book so much more than that.

Florence is such a lovely MC, and think my favorite characteristic about her is that she has to own up to her own faults throughout the course of the book. Family problems, relationship problems, etc, are not placed on one person, but everyone shares the responsibility. (Except her abusive ex who can smd!!!!) The "perfectly imperfect" family definitely reminded me of my own, except the fact that none of us are equipped to deal with death. After reading this book, I may be slightly more prepared for the great unknown.

But the main part of the story, the romance!!! Florence and Benji have my whole heart. I am a sucker for any story in which the dude is smitten with his woman, but has no idea. The fact that they couldn't really be together but the fact the story ends in an HEA had me fucking panicking!!! But never fear, the romance is greater than death, thank god. I need other people to start reading this book and if I could pick one romance to go viral on TikTok when it comes out it would be this one.

This is a terrific read. Warm family background, ghosts, love despite exes, and the struggle to push through to your real self and potential.

This book's strong love story lives and succeeds through magic. SUCH a great read. I was drawn in by Florence and Benji and their growing relationship through all the obstacles of the publishing industry and family loss and re-establishing connections. A unique story arc, and an excellent job of writing to meet the expectations of that arc - I loved it all.

This was a serendipitous reading opportunity: I got the ARC just as our winter snow storm hit town and locked us all inside. The Dead Romantics was the perfect read-in-one-day book that so seldom comes along.

I encourage you to find your own one-day to read and fall in love with this book: So much more than just a love story. Though that part is pretty good too =)

Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the perfect read on the perfect snowed-in day. Release date is July 5, 2022: This one should go on your calendar now!

What I loved most about this was that it was a love story not just with our male and female protagonists, but a love story about a family. It's a great examination of grief and loss too. Really good.

Oh noooo, I really did not like this book, which is such an absolute _bummer_ because the general overarching concept is such a chef's kiss. Besotted ghosts & a romance novelist? Please, sign me right up. But wow, did that execution fail. I wanted more BBC Ghosts vibes and instead got...a slog. Guys, what are these 5 star reviews? Did we read the same book? Has your only introduction to literature been bad fanfiction and old episodes of Gilmore Girls? Because honestly. this sucked and the more I think about it, the more I think it sucks. While writing this I originally gave it 2 stars (2.5, truthfully, but couldn't bring myself to round it up to 3), but now that I'm remembering all this shit, I have rounded it down to a mere 1. It gets an extra .5 for the cover and because I like the title.

Let me just get it out of the way now: the entire time I was reading it, I kept thinking "what is this twee millennial nonsense", and I say that as someone who is a twee millennial. Of cooourse ~Florence (no nickname, ~Florence every time) writes """"smutty""" xfiles fanfiction, brings her new boss a cactus while waltzing in, late, in like ratty jeans and converse (???), has a pArTy GiRL Asian roommate with a sweet hookup to the coolest bars, has a gay and Very Supportive brother, a goth girl sister who is ~dark but with a ~heart of gold, and a nonbinary friend who owns a super quirky b&b (poison plants on etched on doorways! Oh my!) but actually spends the whole time reading books at the desk, pouring rum & cokes, and being nonbinary, I guess. The mayor of their town is a golden retriever, for gods sake, something mentioned at least once every chapter. Her parents met at a furry/mortuary convention (I'm not sure furry conventions were a thing 25+ years ago) and are just the MoSt in love and are just the MoSt quirky. Tattoos! Blasting music while you dance around your funeral home (??)! Waffle House breakfasts! Latino Elvis at the dive bar! Credit card debt! I oNly DriNk RuM & CoKes! Cleaning gravestones (except for the racists-- gotta remember this is set in SC)! Being "run out of town" because she solved a murder at 13 (okay like, what was that? The town is so unsupportive of her "gift", instead of just brushing it off as the ramblings of a middle schooler, that she feels like she could _never_ return to it, but somehow a dog mayor and a Very Unprofessionally run funeral home is a-okay. Sure, why not)! Getting revenge on her ~~bully with a Really Smart Biting Sentence. Coffee is "zoom zoom juice"! Punching her ex in the nose (umm, that's not charming, that's assault but also I want to punch her for that zoom zoom juice bullshit)! ~Happy Death Day balloons at a funeral! It's exhausting. It's nonsense. It's a waste of a great book cover and also my time.

And l i s t e n. I'm not even touching the part where she can talk to ghosts because she only does it like 2 times and it was weak, but I will touch the part where Benji is basically a jar of mayonnaise LARPing as a romantic love interest. No one talks this way. No one acts this way. Insta-love is such a drag and of course ~Florence and Benji have it immediately. She kisses him outside a super exclusive bar after having talked to him for, what, 5 minutes total in her entire life? And of COURSE it was the best kiss evvvver. She's deranged. She's the one who should have been run over by the car. And the whole Big Drama of ~Florence's entire existence being the fact that her ex boyfriend wrote a story about her life and managed to get it published. Like, fine, okay whatever, it's stupid nonsense, but she never _actually_ gets over it. She fusses the ENTIRE novel about it, and then hits her ex boyfriend in the hospital as revenge?? Which is not cute or empowering, she should undergo some court ordered anger management classes. Also I feel like the author stole that ~you used my life for your boooooook~ concept from the movie Music & Lyrics and Drew Barrymore could pull it off SO MUCH BETTER than ~Florence ever could.

Benji, again, is nothing. He is a vast blackhole of a character with no discernible personality but says really stupid things like "imagine how many wishes you could get out of these. At least one is bound to come true." when they are standing in a field of dandelions (because of COURSE they are, this is twee nonsense) and steals lines from The Princess Bride about the shortage of perfect breasts (it is creepy when Benji does it, it is not creepy when Cary Elwes does). Their relationship is based off nothing. It is not steamy or sweet or a good use of my ability to read. It also makes NO SENSE AT ALL that she can see him as a ghost when he was just in a coma or some shit. He didn't die! He has no business being a ghost. And honestly, why did no one tell ~Florence that her boss was in a coma the day before her deadline was due? Does she not have any work friends or idk, check her email maybe? Surely the publishing house would send an email at the VERY LEAST. When her roommate sent her a *TEXT* about it, she was like "hm, weird okay" and did zero followup. Benji told her that he had no family but did have a cat and she wasn't worried that oh my god, no one would feed it and it would just starve to death? (And of COURSE the stupid cat is named after Dolly Parton because, and I'lll repeat it again: this is twee millennial nonsense). And then ~Florence rushes to the hospital to see Benji when he (unfortunately) wakes up, only to hard pass at the last minute? Lord, she sucks. Oh, and I didn't even mention how she literally runs away from every single conversation she has with another character in the book. Someone is talking to her and she just quick gets up and leaves. It's weird and kept taking me out of the story (which, honestly, might not have been a bad thing now that I think about it).

I hate all of these people and I hope their stupid unprofessional funeral home business is shut down by the state authorities. They should all be hit by cars.

I absolutely enjoyed this book, the plot, the settings of NY and her southern hometown, and the characters. Florence Day is a ghostwriter for a famous romance writer, but after having her heart broken she can’t turn out the latest book despite the handsome new editor prodding and threatening her. Having not been home for many years, partly because she sees dead people and her family runs a funeral home, she returns because her beloved father has died. Her first night home she opens the door to a visitor, her handsome, tough editor who has come to visit her and has no idea he’s dead. If that doesn’t make you want to read this book, nothing will. A great paranormal romance novel that was fun to read and root for the main characters.

I really enjoyed this! It's a fun, fresh, really unique take on romcoms, and I appreciated that a lot.

I just couldn’t put this down, this was really cute. The characters were so adorable, I was smiling like a loon throughout the entire time. However, I find the beginning a tad bit slow but that perfect ending made up for it!! So in a nutshell, it’s a 4 star read for me

What would you do if your book publisher is demanding you deliver a finished romance novel tomorrow, and you think romance is dead? And what would you do if he turns up as a ghost on your doorstep the next day?

This was un-putdownable. I may or may not have been reading my kindle at red lights. I just had to see what happened. Ben is a certifiable cinnamon roll, and I love him. I wouldn't necessarily categorize this as a romance novel. Yes, there's the relationship between Florence and Ben, but it is so much more than that! It is about family and death, reconciliation and creativity, stress and the supernatural. I loved all of it. I wouldn't even call this steamy. It is pretty tame, as far as most romances seem to go. But I'm not mad about it.

Due to the somewhat tame romance, I'd recommend this to most anyone.

Exactly what I was looking for for a little escapism. This was a really cute romance novel, with a few paranormal elements thrown in. Admittedly the buildup was a bit slow for me, and the main character was a little bit exhausting till she found her footing, but the ending was really well done. Would for sure recommend this to people looking for a cute romance with a tiiiiny bit of paranormal.

This was a really wonderful book. It did veer on the sadder side with really heartfelt moments of family and the relationship between parents and their children and siblings. I loved how Poston approached all of the family relationships. The small-town life was so wonderfully done too. I felt like I was there with the main character. It had some My Girl vibes and just overall a really heartfelt, lovely read. The character chemistry was on point. Some bits of the story were a little predictable, but I was more than happy when what I thought and wanted to happen did. I highly recommend this for anyone wanting a fast paced read with romantic vibes as well as really wonderful family interactions and a touch of sadness.

Ashley Poston is a delight as always with this latest offering. A recommended first purchase for collections where romance is popular.

I wanted to like this book and I started out liking it, but I just kept getting so frustrated with Florence and wanted to tell her to grow up. A lot of the times I think when the author was trying to make her seem quirky and unique she just came across as annoying and childish. I liked the ghost aspect of the book, and appreciated how it ended.

Florence is the ghostwriter for a famous and prolific American romance writer. Ben was a new editor of her publishing house. But Florence doesn’t only ghostwrite, she sees and can hear ghosts. She tells her long time partner, the One for her, about her encounters with the dead but tells them as stories so he won’t think her crazy. But the partner steals all her stories and writes them into a novel, stealing the memories from her. She is devastated, his theft of her life stories has made her feel that romance doesn’t exist. Suddenly she can’t write anymore. And then her father dies, again devastating, and she is brought back to her small hometown. This hometown that shunned and bullied her because of her interactions with ghosts.
Enter Ben, that new editor of her publishing house. Ben dies suddenly and shows up for funeral. Ben and Florence begin an unlikely and unexpected romance together. In the end he is able to bring her back to writing and to romance. And then she finds that he is not dead but was in a coma so they have a second chance at love.
All the characters are written so lovingly and true. The story is ostensibly a ghost story but it isn’t. It is a love story about real people. The secondary characters, even her father, fly off the pages and we fall in love with the as well. The plot that should sound so outrageous is (again) real and sweet.
I would recommend this book to my patrons.

This was so unlike any other contemporary romcom I've read, which makes sense with the whole she can see ghosts plotline. But it definitely hits all the marks you could ever want, there's no question about that. There is so much love and heart in this book and you can feel it on every page. Florence Day is the epitome of relatable Millenial main character, and she brings so much to this story just by being her cynical about love, heartbroken but not broken, arms always open to friends and family self. She doubts herself and loses hope regularly, but that never stops her from continuing on, from doing what has to be done. And it never shakes her faith in the love her friends and family have for her. Even as they're all dealing with insurmountable grief, they hold on to one another. To watch Florence work her way through her grief and the knowledge that it will forevermore be a part of her was hard to watch for its sincerity. The grief of this book looks you in the eye and makes you acknowledge the fact that we age and grow and as much as we try to avoid it, we will lose people that matter and there is no way around that. There is, however, a way through it, and even though this is definitely a romance, it is also a book about understanding how we keep going when it feels like the world is falling apart.
I won't talk about the love story aspect really, because I don't want to spoil anything, but there's a ghost involved, and that is enough to know this will be a special and unique story, just for that. I love the way the relationship is affected not just by him being a ghost, but by her being the only one who can see or talk to him. It progresses the timeline of the relationship because it builds immediate intimacy, so even though the bulk of the book takes place over just one week, it didn't ever really feel insta-lovey to me at all. Not that insta-love themes are inherently bad, but it is nice to see some real rational for the relationship's development this way.
Overall, this is a fascinating take on a lot of rom-com tropes that covers so much more than just a love story. And after a certain point, you'll have to just keep reading until the end, because this book refuses to be put down.

The Dead Romantics was a really satisfying read. It was romantic, emotional, funny, and heartfelt. Florence was a really fleshed out character, and you get a deep sense of her in the book. While it is a romance, it's way more than that too!

I have enjoyed Ashley Poston's young adult books and so was excited to see what she would do with her first adult outing. I was rather blown away by how much I did end up liking it. One of my only complaints about Poston's YA books has been that sometimes relationships seem to develop a bit too quickly and some of the potential depth is glossed over. That is not the case here. While this is billed as a romance (and does include a romance), it is almost more a story about grief and family and the endurance of love. If you're looking for an adult romance in the light and sexy sense you might be disappointed, but if you're interested in a book with more adult emotional themes, then this story might be for you.

Florence is a ghostwriter for a major romance author, with the slight issue that ever since a particularly horrible breakup, finds herself unable to write or believe in romance anymore. Of course, Florence also has the additional problem that ever since she was a little girl she has been able to see and converse with ghosts (an issue which eventually caused her to flee from her home town and the quirky funeral parlor where she grew up). The story really begins when Florence returns home to attend a family funeral, forcing her to confront her past, her relationships, and her feelings towards life and romance. She also has only a couple of days left to turn in her as yet unfinished manuscript, courtesy of her new editor (and love interest).

There is obviously a romance in this book, and it is lovely and satisfying. However, the almost larger theme of the book is how people deal with grief and relationships (those with family, friends, and enemies, as well as with lovers). There are a lot of lovely emotional moments in this book. I was incredibly impressed with this first adult outing from Ashley Poston and I hope that she continues to write the occasional adult novel in the future.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. All of the opinions given are my own and have been given nothing for my review.

One of my most anticipated reads for 2022 did not disappoint at all! Poston transfuses her trademark whimsy and humor into her adult debut and makes a story about talking to ghosts and planning a funeral ridiculously romantic and fun. You'll definitely cry a few times but temper that with the breathless laughs and you have an incredible story in your hands.