Fully Booked — Episode 20
Reading is something that used to be great, until life got in the way. But it doesn’t have to be like that — you can have a life and love reading, and we’re here to help. Welcome back to Fully Booked, the series for people who don’t know what to read or where to start.
This week instead of reading a full blown fantasy, I did something completely different and read a romance (with fantasy elements). A friend read this synopsis to me and I thought “ooh this sounds like the kind of thing I’d have loved in high school” and hoo boy was I right. For half a second when I started reading it, I didn’t think I was going to like it, but I am pleased to report I was able to get over myself and enjoy a romance novel for the sake of it for once. And you know what? For someone who’s always bagged on romance novels, it was actually a lot of fun.
The Dead Romantics — Ashley Poston
STATS
Borrowed from — my library’s E-resources
Pages — 368
Trigger warnings — death of a parent; mentions of murder; mentions of abusive relationship dynamic.
Rating — 5 stars
The Dead Romantics follows Florence Day, a down-and-out bestselling romance writer who doesn’t believe in the stories she writes any more. Her last relationship ended terribly, like every relationship she’s had, and she needs to write one last big happy ending for her final novel… but she can’t bring herself to do it. Enter her new editor, Benji Andor. He’s young, successful, and infuriatingly attractive. Florence tries to buy herself more time to finish her manuscript, but can’t get Benji to sign off on another delay — until he gets hit by a car. Except, there’s one more thing you should know about Florence: she can see ghosts, and Benji isn’t exactly the ‘go quietly’ type.
As is common with romance novels for me, I don’t really have any glaring plot holes to whinge about, therefore I think this was a lovely little palate cleanser after the dumpster fire of The Court of Miracles. The stakes were low, but the romantic tension was high, and it was the perfect book for me to read and not have to think very hard about.
The ghosts-are-real aspect of this book was handled with a lot of grace. Despite this being marketed as a romance, I confess I was still worried that it would fall into more of the fantasy side of things on account of the ghosts, but they very firmly stayed in the subplot area. They didn’t detract from anything that was going on in the Major Plot category, but also were well-explained enough that I felt that they didn’t need more time in the spotlight.
There were all the good romance tropes to tick off if that’s your thing! These included but were not limited to, a queer sibling, a dead parent, and someone from high school getting an overdue comeuppance. I have to say, I really liked how death was treated by Florence’s family in this, and it made me want to leave a complicated and acrobatic series of next-to-impossible tasks to be completed at my funeral too.
5/5 because I really did enjoy this so much and it feels mean giving it 4 stars for no discernible reason.
