Thank you HQ stories for this ARC! ✨

I read The Dead Romantics last year, and I forgot how much I love Ashley Poston’s writing until I picked up this book!!

The premise of this story is so fun, especially for any book lovers - just imagine stumbling upon the small town setting of your favourite series! I love romance novels, but what I really enjoyed about this book was that there was a nice focus on the other characters as well as the "book boyfriend" and of course that sprinkling of magic throughout was just delicious! ✨ It feels a bit like the TV series "Once Upon A Time" (a good thing!), so if you enjoyed that, you will probably really enjoy this book!

Overall, a really great and fun read for me and I will be picking up the Seven Year Slip just based on how I felt reading this one!

This was so beautiful and perfect, just what to be expected from Ashley Position. This one is for the book girlies who find comfort in their favourite stories and characters. It was all around wholesome and so magical with a sprinkle of romance.

Elsy, a woman who lost touch with herself and her life, just existing rather than living anymore after a broken engagement literally stumbled into the town of her favourite book series and learns what it feels like to live again. The premise of this book is so sweet and one most people who use stories for escapism in one way or another will be able to relate to Elsy. I certainly felt like like Elsy was a mirrorball character in so many ways. Always trying to fix everyone else, prioritising everyone else's problems over your own and thinking she's is not good enough and flawed. I really loved her charter and her growth in this book. Anders was an intriguing love interest who was also just trying to find his happiness again. I loved their slow connection from strangers to reluctant friends to lovers. Though, I have to say, I wish the romantic aspect was fleshed out more. Their change to lovers came sort of out of nowhere and I just wish we got more romance.

The writing and magic realism was truly spectacular, it felt like coming home. This book really just makes you feel warm and safe. It was very descriptive but I did not mind that at all personally. It literally was a book about being inside a book and I loved all the characters. The pace is definitely slow and I felt like it dragged at certain parts, especially during the first 20-40%. I also did not really know what this book was trying to achieve. On the one hand it focused on Elsy and her struggles but it also included romances aspects that then turned it more into a romantic novel. A clear direction was missing in my opinion.

I really enjoyed this book though, the last half really transported me to this magical town and I connected so much to Elsy and Anders. I recommend this book and if you love Ashley Poston you will not be disappointed!

Thank you HQ and Netgalley for the eARC.

Ashley Poston will forever be an auto buy author for me. And while this wasn’t as good as her previous stuff it was still very good.

As always she has an insanely unique and intricate fantastical premise and manages to rip your heart to shreds making you wonder if you’re reading a romance at all.

Where this one fell a little flat was that it didn’t seem like the FMC spent any time trying to figure out what was going on. How did she get to this town no one else does? Why does the MMC also know it’s a story? She just kind of moves past it all which was strange. The chemistry development was also lacking between the main characters, they essentially share zero moments to get to know each other in any meaningful way. There were also some weird errors in the book that made me think the draft wasn’t ready for the ARC stage. Some tense inconsistencies and sentences I had to re read several times to understand.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and HarperCollins publishers for the ARC of A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston.

I want to start off my saying that this book is super sweet and Ashley’s writing feels like a warm hug on a cold day. It’s a story about Elsy who gets trapped inside her favourite romance book series - who wouldn’t love that! However, it feels like 80% of the book is about her inside the book-town with the characters from the book and not with the main love interest (Anders, a grumpy bookshop owner who she doesn’t recognise from the series). I think this would’ve been cool if it was a series we, as the reader, knew from before, but there are so many characters to keep track of. I really liked Elsy and Anders, but I don’t think there were enough scenes where they were together so it doesn’t feel like a romance book.

The book could benefit from another edit where they remove some of Anders’ eye and hair description. His mint green eyes are mentioned 31 times!

I love every single one of Ashley’s novels and this one is no different. I like to try lots of different genres but I’ve always had romance close to my heart.
This book was very much a love letter to our favourite books. Ashley described how comforting these stories can be in such a beautiful way. Plus, who hasn’t read a book series and wished they could visit that town. It was a romance but it also talked about different types of love like between friends and between readers and books. If you want a comforting read that will make you fall in love with books all over again this is the one for you!

Unfortunately not for me. I think this might work for others but I did not connect with the story or characters. This was an intriguing premise but missed the mark.