What a delightful book! I'm not the most enthusiastic romance reader—I need more to the novel than simply the romantic plot to keep me happy. Ashley Poston gave me plenty of questions to answer and dilemmas to be resolved, keeping my brain busy as Florence lives her life.
Florence is an interesting main character. She is a successful ghost writer for a well known author, yet she is riddled with self doubt. Her predicament began in school, when she inadvertently revealed that she inherited her beloved father's ability to see and communicate with ghosts. And because the family business was a funeral home. Kids are cruel and they persecute Florence for her differences. She moves to New York to escape from her past, only to get mixed up with a narcissistic man who steals and misinterprets her life details for a book that he's writing. When confronted, he kicks her out into the rain.
It's a struggle to write a good romance novel when you believe that love is dead. Florence goes to meet her new editor, hoping to get an extension of her deadline for the last novel that she's contracted to write. He's gorgeous but she's so self conscious that she can barely speak and things do not go well. All of which seems important until her family phones to let her know that her dad is dead.
Poston writes grief even better than she writes romance. Florence regrets that she never returned home, she has a hard time believing that he's gone, and she longs to feel like she fits back into her family again. Her despondency feels real (or maybe I'm channeling my own feelings after my dad's death). At any rate, have a box of tissues at hand, just in case.
Florence has just returned home when she answers a knock at the door, only to find the ghost of her editor waiting for her. She's the only one who can interact with him and has to explain the situation. Unlike most ghosts, he hangs around and they get to know each other. I think you know where that is going!
I read on with pleasure, mopping my eyes from time to time, wondering how Poston would resolve things. And I must say that her solution was ingenious. Highly entertaining, heart wrenching and heart warming, all in the same package.
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