This is such a cute read! I do think I probably would’ve given it 3 stars if it wasn’t for how unique and clever it is, written in true Ashley Poston fashion! I gave it an extra star for originality, as I did think the whole concept was really interesting.

Admittedly, I didn’t connect with the characters or the love story as much as I did in The Dead Romantics and The Seven Year Slip (especially TDR, my absolute favourite) but I still would absolutely recommend this, especially to book lovers and anyone who’s dreamed of living inside their favourite book!

Thankyou to NetGalley and HQ publishing for this ARC. The blurb of this book caught my attention straight away!! I had never read anything similar to it before! Romance and books is always a win for me. Elieen is an avid romance reader however she never actually expected to find her own book boyfriend especially in real life. I loved the description of Eloraton, I felt like I was stuck in this book world. The chemistry between Elieen and her male love interest was strong. I always enjoy Ashley Poston’s books however this one felt extra special to me. If you love to read and want to meet the man of your dreams this story will give you all of the feels.

Thanks so much to Ashley Poston, HQ and NetGalley for the eARC, all opinions expressed are my own.

Incredible, Ashley Poston is quickly becoming my favourite author, and this book is no exception. Poston weaves together an excellently executed romance with elements of magic realism. The book follows such a unique concept, that I was hooked from the opening pages. The way the story unravels between Elsy and Anders kept me on my toes and weaving together the plotline of her favourite author.

I absolutely adored the way Poston captured the internal struggle between the characters, overcoming lost loves (in different forms) whilst repairing some of the town residents, I truly loved the way Poston depicted this story. It was so good! I cannot recommend this enough.

Three and a half stars.

Eileen Merriweather is a college English professor who retreated into herself after her fiancé Liam decided he wanted to see other people right before their wedding, leaving her to cancel all the arrangements and inform hi family while he went off with a friend from work 'to clear his head'. Of course not long thereafter he and his friend from work get married. Since then her only interactions are with her online romance book club, and eventually the annual in-person vacation week where they all meet up in an Airbnb to talk romance tropes and drink wine. This year no-one else can make it but Eileen desperately needs a break and decides to drive her clapped out old Pinto hundreds of miles to spend the week at their usual retreat.

Unfortunately, Eileen gets lost, nearly runs over a man standing in the middle of the road, and then finds not only won't her car start, but the town's only mechanic has gone fishing for the weekend. To add insult to injury, there's no cell service. Otherwise this small town she's landed in is perfect, like Stars Hollow or some other utopian small town in America, which isn't surprising because she has somehow arrived in Eloraton, the fictional setting of her favourite romance series which was cut short after the untimely death of its author.

Once she gets over the shock, Eileen is like a kid in a sweet shop, meeting all her favourite characters, eating the famous dishes at the local diner, etc. The one character she can't place is the grumpy owner of the impossibly cute bookshop, Anders, although he seems awfully familiar. However, as she talks to the residents/characters she realises that the author's death has left them all a bit in limbo, doomed not to move forward with their lives because there is no-one to direct them. Can/should Eileen help them to move forward?

This is sort of Brigadoon meets The Gilmore Girls meets ARGH I can't remember the book title (will see if it comes back to me - thought it was Emily Henry - maybe Book Lovers?). The trouble for me was I hadn't read this series of books (I'm not going to be able to explain this very well) so all of Eileen's interactions with the fictional characters felt somewhat removed, like she was explaining her meetings/interactions rather than the reader 'seeing' them. I didn't already know why certain couples were so cute or their meet-cutes were so romantic because I didn't see them, which I guess could be the point, they aren't real so they should be insubstantial but at the same time Eileen interacts with them and really likes them and wants to help she gets drunk on girls' night out with them etc whereas I would have expected her to start realising that they were only two dimensional, like the holograms in Jumanji that only have a set series of responses to expected questions.

I enjoyed this, I enjoyed the romance, and I could sort of understand the logic behind how/why Eloraton comes into being, but I didn't love it.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

This was such a lovely story ! I knew I would enjoy reading this but I wasn’t sure how much !

The book started off really strong and it felt so cosy, just like a warm hug. I loved all of the different plot points that were explored and I especially loved that we were in the middle of a book.

The only reason this isn’t a five star is that I didn’t connect with Eileen until the very end. It was also quite repetitive, this kind of pulled me away from the story slightly but it wasn’t a huge issue !

The ending !!! I cried & then I cried again, both for different reasons but I LOVED the ending.

This is a very good book and I can’t wait for everyone to read this !!

Thank you netgalley and the publisher for my copy :)

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this eARC of 'A Novel Love Story' by Ashley Poston.

This book is gonna stay with me a long time. Eileen is an English teacher who belongs to a group of friends that love a specific author. Every year, they go to a cabin to celebrate their love. Eileen goes alone this year but her car breaks down in a small town before getting there and honestly, props to the car because it gave us perfection.

The plot is rather self aware since she goes to a town based upon the book characters with the actual characters there and our protagonist is so genuine and tries to help all of them with such kindness. But I've got to comment on our LOVE INTEREST. Oh he is perfect. A dashing blond with a personality that is to die for? I love him. And the twists towards the end? Spiced it up a little in a good way.

This book is the type of book that will just stick with you for ages to come and I'm so happy I got to read it.

Thank you to the author and publisher for the chance to read this ARC, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. A Novel Love Story is a breath of fresh air, charming, funny, laugh out loud relatable in Eisy’s devoted love of books. I liked her and Anders, the banter, the flirting and the emotional core of the book really blew me away. It’s witty, sexy, sad, hopeful. I’m a huge Ashley Poston fan and I hope there’s more from this series because I’d love to see more from all the characters.

This 👏 book 👏 is 👏 everything 👏

I loved The Seven Year Slip, but this was something else. The escapism, the romance, the characters, the writing, the enemies-to-lovers trope, the plot. I loved it all.

Elsy experiences something all bookish lovers dream of - to visit the setting of her favourite book series. Like in The Seven Year Slip, Ashley Poston makes this impossibility seem believable, and I felt like I was right there in Eloraton with Elsy.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for my e-ARC of this one. I'm excited for everyone who is yet to read it for the first time!

A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston tells the tale of a woman, Eileen, who somehow finds herself stuck in Eloraton, the fictional town from her favourite romance series. The series author, Rachel Flowers, died before she could finish it - so Eileen finally has the chance to see what happened to the characters after the books ended. Or...does she? The characters seem to be stuck. Can Eileen help? Or will her interference destroy everything?

A handsome bookstore owner was never in the books... but he's here, in Eloraton, and he seems to be the only one who knows what's happening. But is he willing to take a chance on Eileen?

I'll preface by saying that I love Ashley Poston's writing. I'm a huge, huge fan, and I love how much she loves books. This book is an ode to book lovers, book clubs, readers, dreamers, and the importance of books as escapism. I really felt the love for reading throughout, and I loved the idea of physically going into a fictional book place. Eloraton was dreamy, and I could picture it in my head as I was reading, just like I've pictured other places since I started reading as a child - Stoneybrook, Derry, Velaris - I loved it.

However.

I didn't feel a single ounce of chemistry between Eileen and Anders, the bookstore owner. They seemed to go from zero to sixty almost immediately - they're insulting each other one minute and the next he's calling her sweetheart? I felt like I'd skipped several chapters. I didn't appreciate Eileen's meddling, and I would have preferred more from the side characters. I didn't understand the whole graveyard thing, why did none of the other residents question it?! There were too many unanswered questions for me, and I didn't feel anything for the main characters. I also twigged something fairly early on and got annoyed waiting for Eileen to catch up.

In saying that, I loved the little snippets from the Ashleyverse - the line about ghosts staying dead made me chuckle, and I'm always happy to see a Benji mention! Maybe I built this one up too much in my head - it wasn't a disappointment, but it wasn't what I had hoped.

Thank you to @hqstories for the #gifted ARC via Netgalley.

I loved this. I'm really glad that it didn't turn out to all be a dream and that Anders was real all along. Would recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC copy of this book and the author- Ashley Poston is an autobuy / preorder author for me. Her books are always a hearty hug that make you laugh and cry and A Novel Love Story is *chef’s kiss* I loved the plot, characters and I ate it up in one sitting.

A relatable FMC stuck in life after being jilted a week before her wedding finding solace in books and her book club. Fleetwood Mac references also make me too happy!

A wrong turn in the rain and a near miss land her in her favourite book series alongside a brooding Darcy-esque MMC who runs the bookshop.

Love, friendship, grief and embracing life are all themes here as well as my favourite romance tropes: grumpy x sunshine, found family, enemies to lovers. All a match made in heaven for me and I loved it 💜

Ashley Poston nocked it out of the park with her previous adult romances, though I don’t think A Novel Love Story quite hits the mark. Don’t get me wrong, this was an enjoyable and fairly quick read, but a bit of a downgrade from her other novels. The writing, as usual, was spectacular and incredibly voicey. However, the characters did not grip me the same. As much as I wanted to like the supporting characters, I didn’t. It felt like everything was kind of forced. For a romance with this title, it didn’t have nearly as much romance as I expected. This was more of a ‘coming to terms with loving yourself’ type book rather than a full on romance. The romance developed too quickly for my liking as well and wasn’t particularly satisfying in the way I’ve come to love from Ashley Poston. I really love the fantastical spin she adds to her romances, but unfortunately, this one did not stick out to me.

I feel like I have a pretty high standard for romance books - it’s my favourite genre but I get second-hand embarrassment very easily and so I sometimes find it difficult to find books that toe the line between selling me a dream without making me cringe too much. I was so pleased to find that A Novel Love Story finds that balance perfectly!
It does even more than that - it somehow predicted my every complaint and clapped back at my every eye roll. Amidst all the hallmark tropes and the sickeningly wholesome setting, this is a very very clever book and it plays on expectations very well. It knows exactly what it’s doing and I think that even if sometimes it becomes slightly cheesy, it does it in a very self-conscious and intentional way.
I will say that the dialogue was the weakest point for me - sometimes it felt a little bit overwritten, over the top and unnatural but once you get into the story, accept that you are, after all, reading a romance book about romance books, and figure out how to suspend your disbelief, it becomes a lot more palatable.

Honestly in the end I think the fantasy element was the books main selling point. It sets it apart (which is important because a lot of it felt very similar to Book Lovers by Emily Henry) and kept me reading.
Even though I did guess the main plot twists straight away, wanting to figure out the rest of the story had me unable to put the book down and I finished the whole thing in a day. An overall lovely experience!!

a novel love story ~ 3.5☆

Ashley never fails to create the most beautiful romance novels with a sprinkle of fantasy and i’ll forever enjoy diving into the worlds she creates. close knit small town, a grumpy bookstore owner & physically falling into a book! isn’t that all of our dreams? this book felt like a realistic fairytale that dealt with real life issues and complex feelings whilst also feeling magical and heartwarming. Although i enjoyed this book, compared to her previous books, i felt disconnected to the characters and personally didn’t feel the attraction was strong between Elsy and Anders🥲

I really enjoyed this book. I loved the setting of the fictional village and I found the main concept of the storyline both charming and unique.

The only thing that I didn’t enjoy about the book was the continuous mention of Anders mint green eyes. It was mentioned that much that it got very tedious to read.

All in all a great book.

Thank you for my earc of this book. I adore Ashley Poston and was so excited for her next release.
I loved the premise of this book, who wouldn’t want to find themselves inside their favourite romance book/series?
I have to say that the writing style felt quite different to the last few of Poston’s books, to the point that it threw me off a little. I did enjoy the story and the style but it didn’t pull me in quite as much as previous novels by the same author. I think the ideas are lovely and I had a good time reading it but something felt a little superficial and flat and for that reason I never really got drawn in as much as I would like.

I’d still recommend this to romance readers but I’m sadly not as in love with this one as some of her previous books.

5 stars. All the stars.

A Novel Love Story is a love letter to readers. It's a love letter to books, to that one comfort book/series that you reread over and over again until the cover falls off and it's hanging on by a thread. It's a love letter to literary theory, to romance books, to book clubs, to authors and their readers and the bond between them. But most of all, it's a love letter to that feeling that you get when you completely lose yourself in your favorite book, how the stress and anxiety and general chaos of reality falls away.

Eileen is going through that moment in life where everything changes- things haven't worked out the way that she thought that they would, everything that she thought that she knew and wanted is being challenged, and, as it is in life, everything keeps moving and changing when all she needs is the comfort of consistency. So she does what most readers do- she gets lost in her favorite book series. Only in this case, she quite literally gets lost in her favorite book series. I love what the author did with this phrase, and how she turned it into a story that perfectly encapsulated finding yourself in your late 20s/early 30s.

At the heart of this book is a love story, obviously. But there's also small town, found family, friendship, nostalgia, life after love, slow burn, and self discovery. If you ever wondered what happened to your favorite book couples after "The End", that's in this book.

So yes, I adored this book. It felt like a warm hug, a hot cup of tea while curled up on a rainy day, and nostalgia all wrapped up in a gorgeous love story.

Did this just become my favourite Ashley Poston novel?

I love her little romance-meets-fantasy books, and this one just hit all the cosy loving, small time town vibes, marks for me!

I became absorbed in this fictional world within a fictional world. The way this has been written still leaves my mind metaphorically blown! I had all the small-time town vibes. It felt like wandering through the streets of Stars Hollow. I could picture every scene so vividly in my mind, every interaction between characters, every heartbeat in my chest! I was absorbed and hooked in Eloraton, where life felt perfect, even when the honey taffy was stuck to your molars, the burgers were always burnt, the Inn was constantly under reconstruction, and it always rained like clockwork every day.

The thing I love most about Ashley Postons romance-meets-fantasy books is the pop culture reference. They always catch me by surprise and make my smile the widest! They're highlighted and stored away in my little pop culture loving heart for when I need to believe again.

Added to this is the nods to The Dead Romantics and The Seven Year Slip, from little references you will only notice if you've read her other books, to characters reappearing further along in their story from where we left them.

Elsy's self-exploration of her self-worth was what gave this book its heart. It touched mine from the pages and I'm not ashamed to say, made me tearful as I saw my own heartbreak in her pages, and my heart soared as she found the strength and love for herself to finally let go and leap forward in her dreams.

I always claim I'm not a romance reader, but when it's an Ashley Poston romance, I am becoming her biggest reader, and I'm so thankful to Netgalley, HQ Stories and Harperinsider for sending me a proof copy of A Novel Love Story just at the moment my reading needed this refreshing meet-cute.

This is the first book I’ve ever read by Ashley Poston, and wow what a great introduction to her writing! This book follows Eileen as she somehow finds herself stranded in the fictional town from her favourite romance series. If you’re a fan of romance books, then I would definitely recommend this story!

This book felt like a celebration of romance novels, the joy it brings us to read them and the community they can create. I enjoyed the writing style. It flowed nicely, it was very easy and enjoyable to read. Additionally the book was well paced. I felt like all of the characters and side characters were well developed and I enjoyed getting to know them all.

Overall, this was a great book, I rated it 5 stars and I would highly recommend it!

Like with Dead Romantics and Seven Year Slip, I found myself tearing up quite a few times reading 'A Novel Love Story', another exploration by Ashely Poston about grief, heartbreak and loss, all wrapped up in a magical realism romance.

Elys is a shell of herself after being dumped by her fiance two years previously. Her solace has been romance novels and the online romance book club she joined with her best friend. Every year the group meets in an upstate New York cabin for a week of wine drinking and reading, but this year no one can make it. Desperately needing the escape after learning her fiance married the woman he cheated on her with, she decides to go solo, only to find herself in Eloraton, the fictional town from her favourite series by author Rachel Flowers, who died before she wrote the final book.
Elys suddenly find herself surrounded by her favourite characters and also surly bookshop owner Anders, whom she can't remember being in the books but who is also aware he's in a fictional town.

I must admit I'm tired of reading romance novels about romance novels but this book was such a beautiful allegory for grief and heartbreak and the desire to escape into fictional worlds where you can't get hurt. Both Elys and Anders are nursing some deep wounds and I loved how they slowly came to trust each other. While I guessed the 'twist', I thought it was so well done, especially the resolution.

Ashely Poston has truly outdone herself again. This book will really tug your heartstrings but at the same time also leave you feeling hopeful that when life really does hurt you, you can find the strength to rebuild and move forward.

Thanks to HQ and NetGalley for the ARC.