3.5⭐️
1🔥

Quick Breakdown

Magical Realism
Small Town
Bookish Book
Strangers to Lovers
Grumpy x Sunshine
Single POV
Slightly Open Door - Mild

Thank you to @berkleyromance for the gifted eARC & @prhaudio for the ALC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Circumstances has Elsy traveling to upstate NY alone for her book club’s annual romance retreat. She gets turned around in torrential rain, magically landing & becoming stranded in Eloraton, her favorite fictional small town. It’s there she literate runs into the town’s grumpy bookstore owner.

After falling head over heels for Ashley’s previous two books, A Novel Love Story was one of my most anticipated summer reads. There was a lot to love & I know it’s going to be a favorite for many. It’s delightfully whimsical & lighter than her previous works. Who wouldn’t love being magically transplanted into your favorite small town romance series, having a night out at the local dive bar with the girl gang you dreamed to be a part of? I loved that I didn’t see the twist towards the end coming. Between that, an Easter egg cameo & the ending / grand romance gesture, I didn’t mind the tears this pulled from me.

As great as everything was, I wasn’t really sold on the romance. I didn’t feel the chemistry or intense pull Ashley‘s MC’s have had before. There is an insta love vibe here, since our MC’s fell over the course of a week. While I can occasionally buy that time frame, the romance felt too superficial to be believable here.

It should be mentioned that I listened to this one on audio & I wasn’t as hooked by the narrator as I have been by her previous books. While she did great with the assorted accents I wonder if I might have been more invested if I solely read.

All that said, if you’ve loved Ashley’s writing in the past I recommend you give this one a go.

Even though all of her friends canceled, Eileen decides to go on her annual book club retreat alone. Along the way, her car breaks down and she finds herself stranded in the cutest little town. After some time in this perfect small town, Eileen realizes why it seems so familiar - it is the setting of her favorite book series. The characters are stuck because the author died before finishing the final story and Elsy realizes she has to help the town come to its perfect ending. There’s one character, one she doesn’t recognize from the books, that doesn’t want her to finish the story, but Elsy is also starting to develop feelings for him which complicates things further.

What makes this book magical is all of the nods to romance readers sprinkled throughout the story. Who hasn’t wanted to visit the small town of their favorite series and become immersed in the setting? This premise was so sweet and heartwarming in many ways, but also was much more a love letter to books than a romance story. While it wasn’t what I expected, I did enjoy this premise and this book felt like a warm hug.

Thank you to Berkley Publishing and NetGalley for the advance copy.

This book helped solidify for me that there is absolutely nothing Ashley Poston could write that I will not swoon over.

If I could live inside her mind for even just 24 hours, I would 100% take that opportunity, because all I can think whenever I read her books is HOW did she come up with this idea?? And this story is no exception.

Many of us have dreamed about what it would be like if we could actually step inside our favorite romance novel—and here, Ashley gives it to us. Because Elsy’s car breaks down at night in a small town and when daylight hits the next day, she realizes she’s in the fictional—or not-so-fictional?—town of Eloraton, the setting for her favorite romance series.

I loved watching her explore the town and meet characters she already knows in her heart and loves, even if they don’t yet know her. And I especially loved when she meets the grumpy bookstore owner. The one person in Eloraton she can’t remember from the books. But the book series was never completed, because the author passed away before she could finish the last book.

The twists in this book had me holding my breath and I truly just want to know what Ashley’s plotting process is like because her stories give me life. I loved how Eloraton was basically reliving the same day for years until Elsy stopped by and brought the town back to life. I feel inspired to write and find more books I absolutely love every time I read one of her stories.

“There were still happy endings to be found…even if they weren’t my own.”

I’m obsessed. Hands down. I highly recommend checking this one out, as well as her other adult romance/magical realism stories: The Dead Romantics and The Seven-Year Slip.

Read if you like:
- Magical realism
- Unexpected romance
- Forced proximity
- Small town romance
- A book within a book
- Outliers

This was a resounding disappointment for me. I've loved Ashley's previous adult titles and this one just fell so flat.

It took me over 30% to even be slightly interested in the characters. Then that last 7% had such a moment of sheer anger for me.

I would have DNF'd it at that point if i wasn't almost done.

This idea is fantastic the execution just didn't work for me. Ashley's writing was still really good but the way it applied to this story wasn't for me.

This was so so good. I loved the magical realism aspect of it, the depth of both character, the aspect of love after different types of loss, and especially Poston’s writing. She is a master at crafting beautiful stories that we end up reading in a single sitting!

Review will be posted on 7/16/24

English professor, Elsy, loves her book club and spends a week on a reading retreat with them every year in New York. On the way to the retreat, she ends up in bad weather and is detoured into a small idyllic town. The more time she spends in this town, the more time she realizes it is very similar to Eloraton, her favorite fictional town from her favorite book series, Quixotic Falls. As she spends time in Eloraton, she realizes that all of her favorite characters are popping up. She recognizes everyone but Anders, the bookstore owner. A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston is a charming novel for fans of romance and magical realism.

What bookworm hasn't wished they could wake up at their favorite literary destination? Whether it be Virgin River, Stars Hollow, Castle Leoch, Green Gables, or other locations, this is a bookworm's dream. Poston taps into that very well with A Novel Love Story. It is a cute read, but I must say it didn't suck me in as much as The Dead Romantics, which I adored. Ultimately, this novel fell flat for me, because I just couldn't connect with Elsy or her romantic interest; in fact, it felt a bit too cutesy for me at times. However, if you love a cozy romance, give this one a try this summer.

A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston completely stole my heart. I was a little skeptical when I heard the premise--a romance reader finds herself stranded in her favorite fictional town?--but if anyone could make it work, I knew I could trust Poston. And she did not disappoint.

Elsy is on her way to her book club's annual cabin retreat--even if she is the only one who can make it this year. But when she almost accidentally runs a man over with her car, she pulls over to find herself stuck in a small town that feels a little too familiar. The burgers are always just a little bit burned, the town mechanic is always gone fishing over the weekend, and it rains every afternoon--just like in Eloraton, the setting of her favorite romance series. But the town is frozen in stasis, along with its inhabitants--the fifth book still unfinished because the author died before she could write the ending--and Elsy realizes that maybe not everything is better in books. The characters, even the ones who already got their happy endings, weren't all blissfully happy, which came as a surprise.

She meets the grumpy bookstore owner, Anders--and he's the only character she can't place. She decides he must be the love interest for the unfinished fifth book, and she fights her growing attraction for him because she knows she can't be his heroine. But what if she could be?

This is magical realism at it's best. I adored every second we got to spend with Elsy in Eloraton, meeting the different characters, watching as Elsy's presence seems to restart parts of the story, changing things, bringing the town back to life. Like in all of Poston's books, I wasn't sure how she was going to make a happy ending for our couple work, but I shouldn't have doubted. A Novel Love Story left me with warm fuzzies all over. This one is definitely a romance for all the book girlies out there who wish we could spend time in our favorite stories.

Thank you to the publisher for my advance reader copy.

After finishing this, I'm no longer an Ashley Poston fan, not even a little bit. This book turned me into an Ashley Poston hater. No, an Ashley Poston "strongly-disliker."

Tell me WHY I'm reading the exact same book as The Seven Year Slip and The Dead Romantics. This is literally the EXACT SAME PREMISE as her other books, but somehow the main character is more oblivious and insufferable. I was willing to give this a chance, but this book took that chance and flung it across the room. The "twist" with the love interest was so obvious to me, I guessed it a few pages after she met him. (It's not revealed until almost the end of the book.) I'm TIRED of this premise of "they can't be together" when it's so obvious that they CAN and they WILL. Give me an actual reason other than "magic," please and thank you.

Here's where I will concede my brain was fully on while reading this, and I turned my brain OFF reading THE SEVEN YEAR SLIP, and that's why I enjoyed that one slightly more. Anyways, back to me telling you why I'm no longer reading Ashley Poston's copy-paste novels.

One of Ali Hazelwood's biggest criticisms is that she writes the same Reylo fanfic again and again. She beat that by writing Bride and Not in Love, showing she has RANGE. Ashley Poston is lacking RANGE. She's written the same book THREE TIMES, and every time, PEOPLE EAT IT UP.

Nobody has said it yet, but I will: I believe this book, and it's accompaniments, are MEDIOCRE AT ITS BEST. Tell me how you write the same book three times, and people eat it up every time. Good writing? No. Good marketing? AB-SO-LUTE-LY.

Sorry to all the Ashley Poston lovers out there (love y'all), but I simply cannot understand how this woman gets away with writing the same story three times. And all three times her books went flying off the shelves!

Have you ever dreamed about visiting or living in the setting of your favorite book?

Eileen Merriweather finds herself stumbling upon a small town that is awfully similar to her favorite novel series. But Eloraton isn't real, or is it?

A sweet and endearing romance novel with likable characters. Eileen has given up her quest in finding her one true love and instead finds happily ever afters in the novels she reads. I enjoyed the basic premise of the book, and thought it a unique plot. The problem sometimes with having a plot line as such, some things don't always get an explanation that is satisfying to the reader and this happened occasionally in A Novel Love Story. I did find it whimsical though and the characters were endearing and easy to root for. The last third of the book is where it really grabbed me and pulled my heart into the story.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for an advanced digital copy. All thoughts are my own.

Thank you to Berkley for sending me this free book!

2.75 stars rounded up

i did not enjoy this :( i really wanted to love it

the writing felt slow & all over the place. i felt the descriptions of character were so repetitive. and at one point there was definitely an error in the timeline of the story that the editor should have caught??

the idea behind this novel is so unique & cool, and it did not deliver at all. Poston was trying to tell two stories at once: one following Eileen the FMC & her journey to self-acceptance (god her self-deprication was irritating), the other about the characters of Rachel Flower’s books.

I had a hard time following the two stories. Eileen obviously knew and loved these characters so much, but me as a reader??? i know nothing about them!! i’m not emotionally attached to Eloraton…. which made me have a hard time connecting to Eileen. I mean hey, who doesn’t want to go live/visit their favorite fictional universe?? but maybe don’t make your fictional universe have so many characters?? so you don’t have to spend the whole time explaining the meta fictional stories instead of your main FMC?? idk

overall… disappointing. I will be reading Poston’s next book. but this was a miss for me

4.5 stars!

This book was MAGICAL. I fell in love with the premise of this one. It was truly made for book lovers, it was so perfect & immersive. It felt like I was right inside this book alongside the main characters. I loved both the characters (and the side ones) they were so likable and enjoyable to read about—this book is a cozy, cute, and magical read <3.

I can always count on Ashley Poston for a great, cozy romance filled with magical realism that is whimsical and intriguing. As soon as I read the description for this book, I was hooked, and it did not disappoint. I finished just wishing I was able to drive into my favorite book!

At the beginning, I wasn't sure about this book, but as it went on, I really enjoyed it.
Eileen "Elsy" Merriweather, a literature professor loves romance novels. After she was heartbroken by her fiancé, she dove into books. Each year, she and some friends go on a book retreat, but this year, everyone abandoned her. So, she goes alone. Her car breaks down, she is stranded in Eloraton, a fictional town from her favorite romance novels. She is living inside a novel. She meets a man that is perfect, but it is fiction, and she can't live in a fictional world.
She comes to terms with many things, understanding her favorite author's reasons for writing the way she did. So, she has to help the town, who is stuck - since the author died - start again, and live happily ever after.
Sweet.

Ashley’s is back with a whimsical read. A novel love story is a love letter to the book lovers!! Elsy finds herself stuck in her favorite book series + it was such a whirlwind! Ashley does such a great job and incorporating magical realism into her stories while keeping her readers still grounded. A beautiful story about being a little stuck in life, but finding a way to live even when things are always the best in the real world. This book is super light on the romance, but still highly enjoyable as a cozy fall read!

Thank you so much to Berkley Romance & Berkley for the free copy of the book & eARC!

It pains me so much to have given this book such a mid rating. I am not sure if it was because the bar was set so high after The Seven Year Slip which to me is a perfect book or perhaps I was just expecting something different from the premise. Something about this book just didn't work for me.

I absolutely love the concept and the idea of a book within a book was just so cool especially in a romance setting. But I don't know. I just didn't feel connected to any of the characters and the book wasn't super memorable. I did love how there was an area of town like a cemetary where the author's deleted files were.

I think I would have rooted for her and the MMC Anders more if we were not reminded of her ex so often. I felt like he was brought up a lot for then to her just to have feelings for this new guy.

A lot of my book friends loved this one so it very well could be a wrong book at the wrong time situation. With that being said, I will continue to read whatever Ashley writes and I am looking forward to seeing what she does next!

I love the idea of this book; a tribute to all of the romance books that have given us hope, been a safe space when you desperately need a place to escape...books that have created a community full of passionate readers. I think because I had such high expectations the story fell a little short for me. I think there were so many Eloraton characters that I didn't feel as invested in some of the characters but I usually prefer a smaller group of characters in my novels but I love the creative of Poston's stories and am excited to see what she comes up with next.

3.5 stars

Many thanks to Berkley & Netgalley for the ARC

The ultimate bibliomaniac - Elsy literaly gets lost in her favorite story book town. At first she is thrilled to be surrounded by her favorite book characters. She soon realizes she is there to help these character find their story book endings. During this journey, Elsy also heals from her own broken heart.

Who among us hasn’t fantasized about escaping into the world of our favorite books? I love how perfectly Ashley Poston captured this concept, and I love how relatable Elsy’s reactions and fangirl moments were. The romance aspects almost felt second-fiddle to the world-building and the self-discovery journey Elsy went through while she was spending time in Eloraton, and I loved the way the story was balanced between all of these elements.

This book was compulsively readable, whimsical, and infused with such a joyful sense of magic. If I have one complaint, it’s that the chemistry between Elsy and Anders took a bit too long to click for me, but once it did IT DID. For me, the entire experience of reading this book was just so special! I felt entirely invested from page one.

I don’t know how to explain it other than to say that when I’m reading an Ashley Poston book, I feel like I’m wrapped up in a warm fuzzy blanket. Her style is so inviting and cozy and all of her stories feel like comfort reads to me - this book is no exception!

This book is for the hopeless romantics. It’s for the girlies who wish they could live inside the worlds of their favorite books. It’s for the ones who can’t resist a happily ever after and love talking about books with everyone they meet!

Thank you Netgalley for the advanced reading copy! A Novel Love Story was sweet, but ultimately didn’t deliver the romantic, magic-realism charm that I have come to expect from Ashley Poston. I have read all of Poston’s other books, and really liked the Dead Romantics and LOVED The Seven Year Slip, but I found this book too slow paced and I didn’t really like the main characters. I did end up listening to this book since I was kind of behind on my ARCs, and I am sorry to say that the audiobook narrator did not work for me. I do think there were some great parts of this book and I am always a sucker for books that show a love and homage to other books and the romance genre. But even with Poston’s writing and some clever plot points, there was a lot of repetition, plot holes, dragging, and a real lack of chemistry between the main characters (IMO). Even with the issues, I guess I do recommend this book overall for fans of Poston, magic-realism, and the romance genre.

I wish more people (both in the fictional world and the real one) could approach grief in the way Ashley does in her books. The Seven Year Slip became one of my go-to recommendations and I think this one will be too.

This was a lot lower stakes and it took some getting into but I love Ashley's use of Magical Realism in her story telling.

Thank you to Berkley for the opportunity!