Review: The Dead Romantics

The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

I was 50:50 on requesting this because I'm not a huge fan of stories involving ghosts but so many cool writers gave it glowing reviews that I took a chance.

Florence Day has had an unusual childhood, since her father is the town's undertaker and until her little sister was a baby the family lived upstairs in the funeral parlour. Also, she and her father can see and converse with ghosts, in fact her father thought it was his duty to assist ghosts to achieve whatever it was keeping them on the earthly plain. But then, after Florence's 'gift' was splashed all over the local newspapers she was determined to leave small-town Mairmont, South Carolina, and leave she did. A decade later Florence has never been back home and she earns a living as a ghostwriter for a famous romance novelist Ann Nicols. But since her last romance imploding in a fireball she's not felt in the least romantic and has, as a consequence, failed to deliver the fourth and final book in the four-book deal Ann signed with her publisher.

The book opens with Florence nervously going to meet her new book editor in her guise as Ann's 'assistant', hoping for a further deadline extension. But instead of the middle-aged woman Florence was expecting, the new editor turns out to be a tall, handsome, man called Benji Andor, who she vaguely remembers as being a colleague of her ex. Benji might be hot but he's not going to accept any excuses and Florence has one day to turn in the fourth and final novel.

Tragedy strikes and Florence returns to Mairmont to be with her family, but she seems to have acquired a ghost, that of her new editor - although he doesn't know he's dead. Can Florence cope with being back home for the first time in a decade, cope with her loss, finish her novel, and assist Benji to the other side?

Despite my initial misgivings, I really enjoyed at least the first half of the book, it was kooky and full of backstory and grabbed my attention. Then about midway it started to drag for me, also I totally sympathised with Florence's family's irritation at her need to do everything herself and alone, refusing help from everyone and not even allowing anyone else to get a look-in, all whilst giving off a whiff of burning martyr and telling everyone 'I'm fine'. Also, Florence talked out loud to Benji all the time, one particular moment in the B&B bar was particularly memorable for me, but no-one seemed to call her out for it.

Overall, it was a unique romance (albeit I realised how it would end quite early on - arguably I should have guessed before I started the book) with some really quirky touches but I felt there was just too much plot, too many backstories, too many side stories for it to work - unless of course this is the start of a series set in Mairmont ...

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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