Have you ever wished you could spend time in the world of your favourite book series? Personally, I use that idea when I'm having difficulty falling asleep. I imagine myself as a neighbour of one of my favourite characters and have conversations with them. In this book, Eileen Merriweather doesn't just lucid dream this scenario, she accidentally drives into the fictional town of Eloraton.
Eileen (Elsy for short) has just experienced a big disappointment. Usually, a group of friends (the Super Smutty Book Club) assembles at a holiday cabin to relax, eat good food, drink wine, and of course read romance novels. This year, everyone else has conflicting events. Even her best friend is going to Iceland on a spur of the moment trip with her boyfriend (who she hopes is going to propose). Elsy, sad and on her own, decides she is going anyway. In a downpour of rain, her GPS gives up and she just about runs over a man who is standing in the middle of the road. And finds herself in Eloraton.
We gradually get to know Elsy's personal history. We meet the fictional characters that she has loved for years. We share her disappointment that the author, Rachel Flowers, died with the series unfinished. Elsy gets her bearings and finds that everyone in town is kind of stuck in a holding pattern and that her arrival has caused a disturbance. She gets to know Anders, the man she almost ran over, who seems to have been Rachel Flowers’ next book idea and who has been left high and dry by Flowers' death.
I participated in a buddy read of this book with a romance reading friend. I think we both enjoyed Ashley Poston's examination of a number of romance tropes as Elsy tries to figure out what's going on around her. Elsy is both an English professor and a romance reader, so she is well equipped for the task. We also enjoyed watching Elsy blossom from a compulsive people-pleaser to a woman who realizes that she deserves to have a life that she wants. To quit following others and to find what actually makes her happy.
The ending is happy, of course, but just as much from Elsy's newfound self confidence and willingness to try new things as from the new relationship she's developed. And that's how life should be, right? We should all have many things contributing to our happiness and not be dependent on a friend or a lover to be our only source of contentment. It takes a village to make a happy person.
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