Make Believe and the Tales We Weave: An Otherworldly Homecoming

Ashley Poston has cornered the market on romantic dramedies with a dash of fantasy.  And by fantasy I don't mean delusions (although there are those too), but the supernatural.  In this tradition of The Dead Romantics and The Seven Year Slip, she gives us A Novel Love Story.

Elsy Merriweather is an English professor with a dirty little secret: she loves romance novels.  While her colleagues drone on about Beowulf and Byron, she's daydreaming about her next book club read.  Because there's nothing as comforting as a happily ever after.  And Elsy and her best friend Pru know that no one writes one quite like Rachel Flowers.  The author has gotten the besties through many a tough time.  So when she dies and leaves her last book unfinished, Elsy and Pru are grief-stricken.  Especially Elsy.  Because she's been in a funk ever since her fiancé dumped her, a feeling that's only intensified now that Pru's engaged.  The only thing getting her through the day is her upcoming book club retreat.  Yet Elsy is mere miles from the cabin when her pea-green Pinto breaks down.  Panicked, she doesn't know what to do -- until she realizes that she's somehow stumbled into Eloraton, the setting of Rachel Flowers's books.      

It's a book lover's dream.  But also kind of a nightmare.  Because Elsy almost hits someone in the rain, a handsome bookstore owner named Anders.  Persnickety and reserved, Anders is a bit of a buzzkill.  Also, unlike everyone else Elsy meets, she can't recall him from any of Rachel Flowers's books.  Still, she's drawn to him and his charming shop.  As the town mechanic-slash-hot-sauce-purveyor works on the Pinto, Elsy wonders just how long she'll have to stay in this fantasyland.  But as the days go by and she becomes more embroiled in Eloraton's drama -- and the mystery of Anders -- she begins to wonder how she'll ever leave.

A Novel Love Story is a great escape for readers in search of magic.  I love how Poston plays with the boundaries of the world we know and whatever else might be out there.  In doing so, she makes the impossible possible.

And it doesn't get much more happily ever after than that.