"Gilmore Girls" meets "Stranger than Fiction" in Ashley Poston's "A Novel Love Story"

I think every reader has imagined what it would be like to be dropped in their favorite book world. For me, the world I would want to live in is the one of The Spellshop - one full of friendship, magic, and most importantly baked goods with freshly made jam. However, for the main character of A Novel Love Story, the place she would choose is a small town called Eloraton, the home of her favorite romance series. However, after getting lost one rainy night on a road trip, she finds herself transported to this small town - and for the first time feels like she's a main character in her own life.

Eileen "Elsy" Merriweather is someone who feels like she's always a secondary character in everyone else's lives - and also her own. And honestly, the way she felt was something I related to hard. I understand what it feels like to be stuck in your life while everyone else moves on with theirs, and as a result, I was immediately emotionally attached to Elsy. Like me, she also had a higher level degree in English and had gone into teaching, and like me, she had a love of books that academics hate because they aren't "serious fiction." It is very rare I truly see myself in a book, but Elsy gave me some insights into myself I didn't know to be looking for because we were similar enough that I could imagine what I would be like if I were trapped in my favorite book setting.

The town of Eloraton gives so many Stars Hollow vibes on the surface, making it perfect for Gilmore Girls fans. However, once you take a closer look at the town, it becomes clear everything isn't as perfectly quirky as it first seems. The author of the Quixotic Falls series tragically passed away before writing the fifth and final book - and the characters are stuck in the exact moment she stopped writing. Plotlines are dropped, characters are in stasis, and nobody knows how they are supposed to move forward. It's a sad look at what happens when an author dies, especially if they die with their work incomplete. And it serves as a reminder that stories don't only belong to the author, but to the reader. And the love of a fictional world is enough to bring it back to life, even if the reader wasn't the original creator. It was a beautiful look at the longevity of stories and was emphasized by how Eloraton came to life the longer Elsy stayed.

I also really enjoyed the romance of this book: it had all of the big romantic gestures one would expect from a Hallmark movie, with an underlying sadness of finding love after a failed engagement. Both Elsy and Anders, our sexy bookstore-owning hero, last relationships were engagements. And both of them are struggling to move on from them, even years after those relationships ended. In addition, Elsy knows Anders is a figment of the late Rachel Flowers' imagination, adding an extra level of angst that the only person who seems to be interested in her as a person is a fictional man who can never leave the town. It provides a lot of hope, heart, and melancholy - but I feel like this also allows both Elsy and Anders to finally learn who they are outside of their defining relationships, and watching them both come into their own is something special.

Overall, this book was a beautiful fluffy read that serves as a reminder of how important books and stories are to the world. I loved the twists and turns of the plot, and the cute book-inspired romance of Elsy and Anders. It's filled with tropes, shenanigans, and a town I will not soon forget. But most importantly, it shows what it means to choose to have a happily ever after for yourself - and how it might look so different than how you originally imagined it.

A Novel Love Story is available through Penguin Random House