eARC PROVIDED BY HQ STORIES & NETGALLEY
UK RELEASE DATE – 25 JUNE 2024
Blue Monday’s Review
“If this was a romance novel, we’d kiss.”
Another soft romantic read featuring sparks of whimsical magic.
I enjoyed the magical element in this story, it was really fun to see a story use the ‘what happens when you fall into your favourite book’. It was fun to see how it was shown and used to help the story move and develop – it’s not the typical ‘character falls into a book’ set up that I think readers will expect.
I enjoyed the characters, it was nice to experience a slower build up of the tension and romance between the main two leads. We still get lots of interactions and chemistry between the two but it gradually builds, which I think worked really well for the story. I liked how the main characters weren’t only used for the romance between them, but were used in adding to the mystery of the story and in creating movement and flow with the side characters.
Without spoilers, the tension within me truly rose near the end and I did not know what to do with myself.
The only thing stopping this from a 5 star is, completely personally to me, I was missing that final spark. I have loved the previous sparks of everything coming together in Poston’s previous works. I think, for me, I would have loved to have see more given to the final bits of the story, just giving a bit more depth to the ending and fleshing it out a bit.
Book Synopsis
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 to 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.
- grief, mentions of death ↩︎
Dee's TBR 
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