Eileen Merriweather has had a lifelong love of books. A NOVEL LOVE STORY by Ashley Poston finds Eileen driving to the cabin her book club rents every year for a week of reading and discussing books while also consuming many bottles of wine. Only this year, no one else from the book club can make it. Not even her best friend, Pru. So Eileen decides to drive up to New York by herself and enjoy the cabin alone. As she is driving and almost to the cabin a storm rolls in with blinding rain and Eileen is lost. After almost hitting a man on the road, Eileen finds herself in a town called Eloraton.
The man that Eileen almost ran over, Anders, takes pity on Eileen and offers her the loft upstairs in his bookstore, to sleep for the night. He is extremely grumpy but also very cute with mint green eyes that Eileen can't help staring at. When Eileen wakes the next day, her car won't start and she is stuck in Eloraton, which starts to have a very familiar feel to it. She realizes it is exactly like the town her favorite writer, Rachel Flowers based her books on. Eileen is completely freaked out as she starts to meet the townspeople from the books that she has memorized from the very first time she read them. Rachel Flowers died two years ago and while Eileen starts to question what the heck is going on, Anders is trying to get her out of his town.
I have never read a story like A NOVEL LOVE STORY, but I loved every minute of it. I've also never read anything by Ashley Poston before, but now I'm on a quest to read all her precious books. That's how much I enjoyed this fantastic novel. A NOVEL LOVE STORY will have readers everywhere crying and giggling on the very same page. The whole time I was reading I kept thinking Anders was supposed to be in the book that Rachel Flowers never got to finish before she died. Such a wonderful story that will have you questioning what is real or not.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Fresh Fiction. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
A professor of literature finds herself caught up in a work of fiction…literally, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Year Slip and The Dead Romantics.
Eileen Merriweather loves to get lost in a good happily-ever-after. The fictional kind, anyway. Because at least imaginary men don’t leave you at the altar. She feels safe in a book. At home. Which might be why she’s so set on going her annual book club retreat this year—she needs good friends, cheap wine, and grand romantic gestures—no matter what.
But when her car unexpectedly breaks down on the way, she finds herself stranded in a quaint town that feels like it’s right out of a novel…
Because it is.
This place can’t be real, and yet… she’s here, in Eloraton, the town of her favorite romance series, where the candy store’s honey taffy is always sweet, the local bar’s burgers are always a little burnt, and rain always comes in the afternoon. It feels like home. It’s perfect—and perfectly frozen, trapped in the late author’s last unfinished story.
Elsy is sure that’s why she must be here: to help bring the town to its storybook ending.
Except there is a character in Eloraton that she can’t place—a grumpy bookstore owner with mint-green eyes, an irritatingly sexy mouth and impeccable taste in novels. And he does not want her finishing this book.
Which is a problem because Elsy is beginning to think the town’s happily-ever-after might just be intertwined with her own.