Inner Voice Choice: Homeward Sound

It's always fun to visit the whimsical world of Ashley Poston.  With just four novels, her name has become synonymous with otherworldly love stories.  And her latest, Sounds Like Love, may be the most magical yet.

Joni Lark has music in her soul.  She grew up at the Revelry, her parents' music hall on the Outer Banks, and her mother used to sing for a famous band.  So after college, she moved to Los Angeles to make it as a songwriter.  Nearly a decade later, she's penned songs for some of the biggest names in the business.  But a bout of writer's block has her wondering if her career is over.  Also, her mom, with whom she's very close, has early onset dementia.  When she goes home for the summer, it's bittersweet.

Then she starts hearing a voice in her head and doesn't know what to do.  Suddenly, she's privy to a strange man's thoughts -- and he's privy to hers.  Before she knows it, they're forging a connection, all set to mysterious music.  Yet as scary as this seems, it's just what Joni needs.  Because getting acquainted with Sasha sends her on a journey through her mom's past, forcing her to reexamine her present and what it means to come home.

Written in lush, lyrical prose, Sounds Like Love is unforgettably poignant.  Poston crafts Joni's world with care and intention, evoking our own what-ifs in this beautiful tale of romantic and familial love.

If you heart love and fancifulness, then Sounds Like Love hits the right notes.

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.  

New Lease Release: The Old Apartment

When I heard that Ashley Poston of The Dead Romantics fame had another book out, I was excited, albeit cautiously.  Because there was no way that The Seven Year Slip could be half as good as its predecessor.  But as I began reading, I knew I was wrong.  I was transfixed.

Clementine West is heartbroken after the death of her beloved, eccentric Aunt Analea.  The two used to travel the world, collecting passport stamps like stickers and embarking on endless adventures.  It was on these trips that Clementine fell in love with painting, illustrating the margins of her guidebooks with dreamy watercolors.  Now nearly thirty, Clementine has inherited her aunt's New York City apartment, a bittersweet gift steeped in pain and memories.  Things become even more complicated when an aspiring chef shows up, claiming that Analea sublet the apartment to him.  Iwan is charismatic and handsome and completely bewitched by food.  He has tattoos of herbs and a whisk and bakes Clementine the best lemon pie she's ever tasted.  Despite the walls she's put up, Clementine finds herself falling.  But resisting Iwan's charms is just the tip of the iceberg lettuce.  Because Iwan is from seven years in the past, back when Analea was alive.

With wry humor and beautiful imagery, Poston takes us on the journey of Clementine's heart.  Time shifts and bends as in any space-time continuum story and that, in and of itself, is fascinating.  But it's Clementine's relationships with her aunt, Iwan, and, ultimately, herself, that propel this hauntingly lovely novel.

And that's what makes it so magical. 

Dearly Departed and Humor Whole Hearted: A Romance Writer's Resurrection

"Love is dead," Florence Day said 

To her editor one day.

But her editor was hot

So she blushed on the spot 

And then they had a roll in the hay.

Okay, so that's not what happens in Ashley Poston's The Dead Romantics.  But it's not not what happens either.  Ghostwriter and mortician's daughter Florence Day has been through a lot.  An epic breakup.  A missed manuscript deadline.  A family tragedy.  And oh, she also sees dead people.  Understandably, it all makes her a bit cynical.  At least on the surface.  But underneath the humiliation and hurt is the heart of a romantic that refuses to die.  

This novel is like The Addams Family meets Six Feet Under with your favorite romcom sprinkled in.  Which is to say, delightful.  Poston's writing is that irresistible combination of clever and lyrical.  Plus, there's a small southern town, a Victorian mansion of a funeral home, fields of wildflowers and balloons, and two well-timed twists, all of which spell cinematic feature.  (Hear that, Hollywood?  Please add The Dead Romantics to your long list of post-strike projects).  But the most compelling thing about this book is Florence's growth.  She starts out as a woe-is-me victim in hiding, then breaks back into her past to author her future.  The part where she sees her ex is particularly poignant:     

"He gave me a strange look, and oh, I wished he could've said that he missed me.  And I wished he could've apologized.  And I could've told him that my stories were real, and that they were precious, and that I wanted to tell them someday.  Because ghost stories were just love stories about here and then and now and when, about pockets of happiness and moments that resonated in places long after their era.  They were stories that taught you that love was never a matter of time, but a matter of timing." (309)

Florence's epiphany about writing -- and life -- is so spot-on beautiful.  Because that's what The Dead Romantics is really about -- a writer rediscovering her voice.  

Next up, another account of love and loss:

Casper Disaster: The Ghost That Got Away