I really love Ashley's take on romance stories and this was no exception. Who hasn't dreamed of living in one of her favorite bookish worlds?!?! I adored this concept and thought it was so well executed. Ashley is an auto buy author for me and she never lets me down!

If you could escape to a fictional town and its characters, would you?

Elsy's life has its ups and downs, and this year, her book club has all bailed on their annual trip. However, she decides to go it alone, and when her Pinto (amazing, it was still running!) breaks down, she finds herself in her favorite book town. This is both good and bad because she has read these books so many times that she knows the ins and outs of all the characters. All but one, the grumpy bookstore owner. She can't place him and doesn't remember his character. There is a reason for that, but to explain would spoil part of the story.

While Elsy is running away from her life, finding her favorite town creates its own issues since she cannot contact anyone. Overall, spending a week in this town was good for Elsy because it helped her realize what she wanted from life and work through her past relationship failures. I think it also helped her to see her friendship with Pru in a new light. However, she tended to meddle in the character's lives because she knew more than they did about how things would turn out.

Then, there is the relationship between Elsy and Anders. They are attracted to one another despite several missteps, but something is holding each of them back. Could it be Anders' previous relationship? Or is it that he doesn't fit the mold like the other characters, but for a very good reason? However, once these two get past those moments, the relationship skyrockets. But what goes up must come down. 

Sometimes, I pick up a book, and it is the right book for the right moment. That is the case here. I was looking for a bit of escapism, and this book provided it in spades. I loved getting to know these characters and watching Elsy's interactions with them. I was also happy when Elsy discovered her true self. She needed this time alone to move forward with her own life.

I enjoyed this book, and now I wonder what book town I would want to get lost in, even if only for a little while. I'm going to have to think about that one.

We give this book 5 paws up.

2.5/5 rounded up because at the end of the day I adore Ashley Poston's writing

So devastated I didn't enjoy this! I loved The Dead Romantics and The Seven Year Slip so I thought I'd love this one for sure (especially because I loved the "falling-into-your-favorite-book-series" portal fantasy concept - see: how much I loved Sarah Rees Brennan's Long Live Evil which also comes out this summer and I think does this concept better but it's also unfair to compare because they are different books in different genres doing different things).

Unfortunately I did not care about the characters at all...Eileen, Anders, and all of the side characters felt so one dimensional to me and so I was never invested in both the main and subplots. The romance happened way too quickly for my liking and the obstacles they faced leading to the "third act breakup" were underwhelming so the ultimate conclusion was just...meh. I don't think I'll remember this one all that much.

There were also a lot of repetitive descriptions that grew tiresome and quite a few jokes that didn't land (when normally Ashley Poston's humor works for me). That being said, while I don't think the writing in this book is as strong as her other work, Ashley Poston's writing overall is still great and it is ultimately what kept me from dnf-ing. While I didn't necessarily care about the romance, the romantic scenes were so well written that there were moments I was rooting for them. I also continue to love the magical elements she includes in her contemporary romances - even if the execution in this one wasn't my favorite. The slight mystery surrounding how the town from the books existed and how Anders was connected kept me intrigued throughout and I ultimately liked how it was explained.

I do think that my feelings on this book have a lot to do with the fact that I personally am not huge a contemporary small-town romance fan and this year in particular I've been getting picky with the romances I read. I think this will work better for a lot of other readers and Ashley Poston readers may still want to give this one a chance.

This was a fun surprise for me because I not only hadn’t read anything by Ashley Poston before, but I also didn’t really reread the blurb when I started. The concept is fun. A bookish theme can feel overdone sometimes, but in this case it felt fresh and dare I say, novel? A woman who loves a happily-ever-after (don’t we all) but who has found herself robbed of one. Her chance for her own HEA may finally arrive when she finds herself in the fictional town of her favorite books.

“There once was a town, and it didn’t exist.”

Once I got started, I was surprised to find this story is more emotional than I expected. The concept had a lot of levity, but as a character I found Eileen to have more depth than expected. The entire book gave me Gilmore Girls vibes in a sense (I’m not alone in dreaming of living in Stars Hollow), but also a dash of The Wizard of Oz.

Eileen Merriweather is unhappy. Her fiance broke off their engagement only a week before their wedding, she’s unhappy in her job, and she can’t help but compare everyone else in her life finding happiness while she is alone and lonely. She loves to escape into her favorite fictional town, Eloraton, where her favorite romance stories take place.

Eileen spends all year looking forward to her week-long retreat to a cabin in New York with her book club friends, where no one judges her for her smutty taste in books (the same can’t be said for the English department where she is a professor). But this year, everyone backed out. Eileen is already on her way when the last holdout—her best friend Pru—ditches the trip as well to head to Iceland with her boyfriend.

A wrong turn leads Eileen to a small town she’s never been to before, and a near accident with a handsome man leads her car to breakdown. She stops in a bar, finds herself staying in the loft of the handsome stranger, and in the morning it dawns on her. Eileen knows where she is. She’s in Eloraton. But the question is, how is it possible to find oneself in a fictional town?

The town of Eloraton charmed me! There’s something fun about a town in a book modeled after what a town in a book should be like. Does that make sense? The people live the same day over and over until Elsy (Eileen) causes a shock to their universe. Suddenly, things begin to move forward. It was as though the town was waiting for her to arrive so her story could propel them into motion.

Elsy is in the middle of a romance novel—one that the author never finished because she passed before it was complete. Perhaps Elsy is the one who can unfreeze them by living out the rest of the story. That gorgeous stranger is named Anders, and he is a grumpy bookstore owner (of course). Anders doesn’t appreciate the ripples caused in his town by Elsy’s arrival, but perhaps she is just the person he didn’t know he was waiting for.

A charming story, a delightfully fun premise. This is a book for those of us who dream of living out our own favorite books some day. Elsy is on her own journey to find herself, and ironically she may do just that in this fictional town. I hope it’s not too obvious to point out that Elsy was just as stuck in her own life as the town of Eloraton was reliving the same day on a loop.

This book is an absolute delight!

Thank you to Berkley Publishing for my copy. Opinions are my own.

Thank you NetGalley for this eARC! I’m sorry for the late review, but this book published the week school ended.

I was so excited to get my hands on “A Novel Love Story” by Ashley Poston. I love her last book “Seven Year Slip”, but this one did not capture me the way that one did. This book follows Elsy who is stuck in a rut when the novel opens. She sets out for a week in upstate New York by herself because none of her friends can make their annual trip and she ends up stuck in the town of her favorite book series that has been left unfinished when the author suddenly died. I loved the concept of this book. All book lovers would love to be stuck in the small town worlds of the stories we love the most. However, I found keeping track of all the different characters and learning their back stories to be confusing at times. The book had many descriptive paragraphs and yet I feel like I still don’t know the characters well. I was reading reviews on StoryGraph that said the book had diverse characters, but I must have missed that because the only physical description I remember is the love interests “minty-green eyes”. Which brings me to the love-interest. I liked Anders. I guessed the twist a quarter of the way through the book, but I didn’t feel the chemistry between him and Elsa. I hate to say this because the author makes fun of this complaint in the book, but it was very much “insta-love”. Anders describes the main character as bubbly and over-positive, but her inner monologue complained so much that I didn’t get that either.

Overall, I would recommend this book. I think many people will enjoy it. I liked it myself, just not as much as I had hoped.

Ashley Poston is a new go to author for me! Her stories always feel like a cozy hug. Thank you for this arc!

I will forever read anything Ashley Poston writes and absolutely love it and "A Novel Love Story" is no exception.

✔️ Magical Realism
✔️ Grumpy/Sunshine
✔️ Small Town
✔️ Love on Vacation

If you love books about books and book lovers, this one is for you. It's a love letter to romance and romance readers and I enjoyed that the FMC was such a proponent of the genre.

I loved that this book fed into a lot of our daydreams - that we could enter the world of our favorite books and mingle with the inhabitants, characters we know by heart. And makes you wonder, would you just live the story as is? Or would you being there change things?

The small town setting was fun and the characters were quirky in fun way, reminiscent of the inhabitants of your favorites like Stars Hallow or Schitt's Creek.

Seven Year Slip and Dead Romantics were my among my top ten reads the last two years so my expectations were pretty high. Against those two, this would be ranked third.
- That said, the beginning snd the ending of the book were the strongest and I was satisfied with the HEA

Steam 🔥
Banter 🗣️🗣️
Swoon 💕💕💕

4.5/5

I loved the Dead Romantics, so I had strong suspicions that I would enjoy this book as well. Boy, was I right. I was sucked into this story so fast! Ashley Poston does magical realism so well. This story was so much more than a romance, and I never knew where it was going to take me. Highly recommended.

Thank you NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

As always Poston delivers a charming and whimsical love story that is at once gut wrenching and cozy. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in this world although I found the story a little lagging in the end.

Thank you Berkley for my copy of A Novel Love Story. I’d say this was 3.5 stars rounded up for me. It’s a sweet story, perfect for readers who look to love stories as an escape for their own lives.

It did however feel underdeveloped at times. Getting caught up in the fantasy of this magical book land seems like a good enough reason for our main characters to fall for each other so fast, but I just personally didn’t enjoy it as much as I hoped to. I wasn’t rooting for Anders and Elsy that much because it just all felt too rushed, and I couldn’t tell what he even liked about her. And I really didn’t want to hear about Anders’ “mint-green eyes” one more time.

I did really enjoy the reveal of Anders story, and the end was very satisfying, so I would recommend this to friends. It just wasn’t MY fave.

Elsy heads alone to her annual book club retreat this year. All the others of the book club bailed but Elsy really needs this after getting her heart broken and feeling stuck in her life. She heads to the cabin in her Pinto, yes a Pinto!, and finds herself caught in a terrible storm and ends up stranded in a small town. But as she starts to look around the town and meet its residents she discovers that this is the town and characters from her favorite romance series. The only character she is unfamiliar with is the grumpy bookstore owner, Anders. Elsy is trying to determine why she is even there. Is she supposed to help finish the last novel? Whatever the reason Anders is determined to stop her from interfering and get her out of town.

Ashley Poston has cornered the market on Cozy Romantic Fantasy. Although her stories are very different from one another they all have a sense of undeniable magic and romance. They are filled with great characters, swoon worthy love interests and lots of heart. This was my favorite by Poston so far. It had me chuckling and tearing up until the end.

4 ⭐️

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
#NetGalley #ANovelLoveStory #AshleyPoston

I loved the seven year slip, and I liked the dead romantics. I thought this book was just OK. There were so many characters and side stories it pulled me away from the main plot.

3.25/5

This book really disappointed me, as I have really loved other books by this author. My Pros and cons:
Pros:
- I really enjoyed the concept and a lot of the story, it is a cool idea that you get stuck in the town setting of your favorite book series.
- I enjoyed the connections to Poston’s other works, particularly The Dead Romantics.
- Despite not particularly enjoying this book I will continue to read Poston’s work.

Cons:
- The character work, particularly with two main romantic leads, is just not on the page. We never get a real sense who Elsy or Anders is. All I feel I EVER got was Anders has green/mint/peridot eyes (btw all those are very different colors so?) and Elsy likes Romance books and seemingly nothing else. We don't really get motivations for these characters or have a single clue who they are... and we are supposed to be invested in their romance?
- The book often acts like the fictional book series is something we should be familiar with... but it like barely mentioned something 30% of the book ago and I’m meant to remember who this person is?
- Needed editing for length (as well as the above)

The nitty-gritty: Romance rules in this funny, sweet and unexpectedly thoughtful story about second chances.

Romance fans, this one’s for you! Ashley Poston has once again written an engaging, funny, heartfelt story with a touch of the speculative. After loving last year’s The Seven Year Slip, I knew I had to pick up A Novel Love Story, and I had such a good time with it! This is a true love letter to romance novels, and while some of the writing was a little over the top and too sappy for me, Poston successfully shines a rose colored light on romance fans and the books they love. Plus the title is simply perfect for the story.

Elsy Merriweather and her bestie Pru adore the Quixotic Falls books by Rachel Flowers, a romance series that takes place in a small town full of quirky characters (think Stars Hollow or Virgin River). They’ve even formed a book club centered around the books and call themselves the Super Smutty Book Club. Once a year, the book club members (who are scattered all over) meet at a cabin in the Hudson Valley to drink wine and dish over their favorite characters, but this year, everyone—except Elsy—is busy and has canceled. Elsy is especially hurt that Pru has opted to go to Iceland with her boyfriend instead, even though Pru insists that he’ll most likely propose to her on the trip. I mean, how can you argue with that?

Still, Elsy is determined to do the one thing she loves most, even if she has to do it alone. But during the long drive to the cabin, Elsy takes a wrong turn and winds up in an unfamiliar town. Or is it unfamiliar? The local diner is called The Grumpy Possum Café, there’s a bookstore called Ineffable Books, and when she spots the Daffodil Inn, Elsy is shocked to realize she’s been transported into the world of Quixotic Falls and the fictional town of Eloraton—impossible but true. Even the people who live here are the same characters from the books she’s grown to love. There is one person she doesn’t recognize, though—the supremely grumpy but attractive Anders, the owner of the bookstore. How does he fit into the books? Could he be the hero of Rachel Flowers’ fifth book, the one she never finished? As she and Anders grow closer, Elsy is torn between staying in her happy place or going back to her real life.

This was such a fun concept: to be magically transported into your favorite book world. What reader doesn’t wish that could actually happen? And you can tell that Elsy is absolutely thrilled. Her life for the past couple of years has not been great—her fiancé dumped her a week before their wedding, and even her relationship with Pru suffered from the fallout. So literally being able to interact with a fictional world and characters that she loves is a balm for her soul. What makes this concept really interesting is that the town of Eloraton is “stuck” in time. Because Rachel Flowers never finished the fifth book (due to her untimely death in a car accident), the characters don’t really know what they’re supposed to be doing. The inn is still being renovated from the last book, and no one knows who the book’s romantic couple is supposed to be. Even worse, when Elsy stumbles into Eloraton by mistake, her presence starts to change things, and suddenly the cozy, predictable world of Quixotic Falls isn’t as cozy as it used to be.

Ashley Poston takes all the tropes of romance fiction (and I do mean all) and has a blast incorporating them into her story (there's a bookshop cat named Butterscotch, for example). She throws in lots of little mentions of fandoms as well, like Twilight (remember when it was cool to be a fan?). I also loved the way she celebrates romance readers. Elsy is a fan of romance in general, but she’ a super fan of Rachel Flowers, and her love shines through as she navigates the town of Eloraton and its residents. Some of my favorite parts of the story take place in the bookstore, and at the end of the story is a wonderful bookish surprise that I wish I could talk about but I won’t.

But as lovely as this celebration of romance is, of course you can’t have the “sweet” without the “bittersweet” to go along with it. One of the main themes of A Novel Love Story is moving on, something Elsy has been trying to do since her breakup, but hasn’t been successful with until she finds herself trapped in a fictional town. There are so many things in Eloraton that are tempting her to stay. There’s Anders, and the possibility of a relationship with him, as well as all the other sweet and quirky characters that she fell in love with before she even met them. But then there’s Pru and her Super Smutty Book Club friends back home, and the thought of never seeing them again is heartbreaking. Poston asks the question, can you have true love and also live the life you want, or does embracing love mean you have to give up everything else? Elsy has some tough choices to make and it’s not going to be easy.

And just like the romance stories you’re familiar with, the author sticks to the tried-and-true tropes and delivers a feel-good ending that wasn’t completely surprising, but it made me happy. Here’s hoping Ashley Poston writes more speculative romance stories like A Novel Love Story, I’m ready for the next one!

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston is an enchanting read! Eileen Merriweather loves to read happily-ever-after stories. She has had a rough time and books are her perfect escape. While traveling to her annual book club retreat her car breaks down and she turns into a town that is not quite what it seems. She meets a grumpy book store owner and tries to figure out why the town seems so familiar. Almost like it is from her favorite book?

I enjoyed jumping through the chalk drawing to enter the world of Eileen’s favorite book. This is a delightful love story with fantasy, fun characters, and a fantastic setting! I felt very connected to Eileen and was hoping she could have a real life (or real book ) happily ever after. Eileen had a great circle of friends and it was delightful to get to know her book club. As a reader who has embraced fictional worlds and wanted to move into them the story brought me so much joy!

A Novel Love Story will make you smile with the characters, setting, and love story. This was the perfect story to get lost in! I highly recommend!

I was given a copy by the publisher and not required to write a positive review.

I thought that A Novel Love Story was alright but it’s definitely my least favorite of Ashley Poston’s books that I have read. I didn’t feel a ton of chemistry between the main characters. I loved the fictional town and characters and the story line, but the romance didn’t really work for me.

I am such a fan of Ashley Poston’s unique concepts in every book she writes. The blending of magic and mystery is always so fun and creative. This book was well written but not quite interesting enough to hold my attention from start to finish. I predicted some twists and was surprised by others. Overall it was a fun and delightful read.

Thanks to Berkley and NetGalley for the DRC and Libro.fm for the ALC.

I received a free copy of this book thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group; all opinions expressed are exclusively my own.

I really enjoyed this rom-com with a touch of fantasy and a whole lot of cozy! A Novel Love Story appealed to my humor and my heart, and I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the town of Elatora with Eileen. The novel never explains the supernatural element, which for some might be frustrating, but I didn't particularly mind.

For sensitive readers, there are references to death of loved ones, cheating, and graphic sexuality.

A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston is so cleverly self-referential as a nod to the romance genre and all it encompasses. Elsy, the main character, hasn’t gotten over a bad breakup, so she decides to go on the traditional book club meet-up alone (since no one else can make it this year) and gets lost en route to the cabin. She ends up in the town that is the setting for her favorite romance series. Meeting the characters from the books and trying to interact with them as if she doesn't already know their love story and everything about their lives proves to be an interesting dilemma for Elsy. And then Anders, a character she can't recall from the books, becomes a central figure in her journey and their love-hate relationship adds an exciting dynamic to the tale.

The twist in the plot may not be a mind-bender, but as the book emphasizes, the journey is the real fun. The characters in the town are well-developed, and Elsy and Anders are particularly noteworthy. Their complex and compelling nature adds depth to the story. If you're a fan of romance novels, this book is a must-read because it offers a unique twist on the genre. It cleverly plays with the tropes and conventions of romance novels while still delivering the cozy feelings and grand gestures that fans love.