Hi readers, sometimes I think about what makes a fiction a contemporary women and a romance?

A Book can be a combination of both of course. A book can be about the protagonist female’s love life and life per se but the cover of a book sets the tone.

A contemporary women’s fiction usually has one female in the cover, assuming there’s only one protagonist like Ghosts by Dolly Alderton and Olive by Emma Gannon. A romance fiction usually has two characters in the cover like Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood and The Cheat Sheet by Sarah Adams.

I’m saying this because The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston is both but it’s more contemporary women because the book is more about the female protagonist Florence Day, not that I’m complaining.

The Dead Romantics is about ghostwriter Florence who sees ghosts. She left her hometown years ago and she finally comes back because her dad died and she tries to do the list her dad left them for his funeral. She also can’t finish the romance book she’s supposed to write and past deadline because she doesn’t believe in romance anymore because her ex boyfriend used her real life stories to write a book.

The ghost of her editor Ben tags along with her. She thinks Ben’s unfinished business is the manuscript. They spend time together and Florence falls in love with ghost Ben when she must not because he’s a ghost!

What do I think of the author’s writing?
I’m torn.

Ashley Poston nailed some scenes like Florence and Ben’s scenes together and how it’s sinking in to Florence that her dad is dead. I like these words AP wrote:

“And a deeper part of me asked, How can you think about Ben and writing and books when your dad is dead? I thought about them because if I thought too much about Dad, that stone in my stomach would weigh me down to the center of the earth, and I’d never crawl out again.”

I know this feeling. It’s like my brain is saving me by thinking about other things to not drown myself in sorrow.

What I didn’t like, and this is just me and my reading preference, is when AP describes the setting or something in paragraphs. I know it’s important to the story but too much words to describe a setting makes me want to skip to scenes. Here’s an example:

“The funeral home was a renovated Victorian mansion, repainted white every summer so it looked fresh and ghostly for whatever happy haunts decided to arrive. The shingles were a deep obsidian that, when the sun hit the roof just right, sparkled like black sand. The patterns in the foundation’s brickwork were faded reds and oranges, and the wrought iron railings curved sweet deathly designs across the upper windows and dormers. On Valentine’s it was festooned in paper-cutout hearts and pink and red balloons, on the Fourth of July we set off purple fireworks, and at Christmas it was outlined in lights of red and green, like the grumpy old grandfather who didn’t want to admit he was enjoying the holidays but very much was.”

This is too long for me. An image of a funeral home entered my mind, I skipped the words, and then I moved on to the next scene.

HUGE SPOILER: Another thing I didn’t like is why did Florence and Ben waited three months before talking to each other. It’s anticlimactic.

Florence rushes to the hospital to talk to Ben but she doesn’t because Laura, Ben’s ex, is there. She sees her ex there and she punches him and she leaves. For three months, she writes and writes until she finished her book. Ben emails her and she meets him at the office. They talk and they kiss.

Someone should made contact right away. Ben should have asked Florence to meet him in his office the moment he came back to work. But no. Three months later, Ben emails Florence that it was pleasure working with her. Florence had to be the one to say she wants to set up a meeting with him. Arghh. So what if Florence didn’t reply that. Would Ben be ok with doing nothing and just let Florence go? If Ben really wants Florence he should be the one to set up the meeting even when he thinks that they’re time together was only a dream.

He is like “oh, I want/love her” and then “but I’m going to do my job first and just let her come to me”

Well, Ben did apologize for making Florence wait because he didn’t realize but still annoying. Anticlimactic. He knows he wants her with or without being a ghost.

Anyway, this is one of the scenes in the end not what happened in the last chapter.

The post Let’s Talk About The Dead Romantics (Spoiler) appeared first on Bookaholic Belle.