A review by bookish_leslie
The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

slow-paced
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.5

What To Expect:
  • Dealing with death and grief
  • Ghosts
  • Lack of self-belief
  • Writer’s block
  • Immature and juvenile (adult) FMC
  • “I have to do everything alone and can’t ask for or accept help”
  • Family dynamics
  • Insta-love
 
Spice: 2🌶️
Romantic tension, a few kisses, FMC removes her shirt while MMC talks explicitly about what he would like to do to/with her if he could, one semi-open-door scene but without explicit sex talk or descriptions


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My Thoughts:

I’m bummed because I loved Ashley Poston’s book The Seven Year Slip; it was a 5-star read, and I was hoping this book would be the same, but sadly, The Dead Romantics was a miss for me. It was the ending that really pulled down my rating, but I honestly had problems with the entire book.

Plot: The plot was somewhat interesting, though I felt it tried to take on too many different storylines or topics - ghosts, death, romance, career stuff, family dynamics, an eccentric funeral... It was a lot, and because there was so much breadth, it was lacking the depth I wanted in both the grief/death storyline, as well as in the romance storyline.

But it was going along okay(ish) until I got closer to the end. The ending was happy, but so, so bad. Pretty much everything that happened after
Florence went to see Ben in the hospital (and - surprise, surprise - as the queen of walk-aways, proceeded to walk away before she even made it to his room, but not before assaulting her ex by punching him in the face)
 was a big ‘nope’ for me. 

But when Ben didn’t remember Florence outside of their professional working relationship, then suddenly remembered her when she went to see him in his office, then immediately dropped everything to fly with her to her brother’s wedding, then hopped into bed with her, and they exchanged “I love you’s” - all on the same day, and after only a week spent together and months spent apart? Um, no. Hard no. There's no way their declarations of love could be taken seriously
.

I’m all for happy endings, but I hate insta-love, and that ending was too much, too fast and ended up feeling so forced, rushed, and cringey. 

Characters: I wasn't really a fan of any of the characters, if I'm honest.

28-year-old Florence was the FMC, and she was juvenile and unlikeable. She whined about the same things over and over again. She insisted on doing everything for her father's funeral herself because she was the oldest (but didn’t actually do much of anything???), and then felt resentful about it. God forbid she ask for or accept proffered help. And she had a bad habit of getting up and walking away any time someone tried to have a conversation with her. For most of the book, we basically followed her around as she moaned about her failure as a writer, walked away from people (mostly Ben), opened her laptop to write (but didn’t), and pounded back the rum and cokes or her “zoom zoom juice” (more on that below).

Ben, the MMC, had no discernible personality, other than being tall, having great forearms and being organized. 

The side characters, like Florence’s best friend and family, were mostly flat and caricature-like, and while I’m all about having representation, the LGBTQ rep (in particular, the non-binary character) felt forced, rather than organic or integrated.

Writing: The writing was a bit all over the place for me. Sometimes it was really good. There were many beautifully worded sentences throughout, as well as touching emotional moments or scenes, like, for example, when Florence found out her father had passed away (that’s not a spoiler).

“‘They couldn’t - he was gone. He was gone by the time we got there - by - he was…he’s gone, darling.”

Gone.

The word was so quiet, I barely heard it. Or maybe my heart, thundering in my ears, was too loud. But whatever it was, the word didn’t register, not really, not for a long, long moment. And then, like the cold wind, it burrowed deep into my bones, and I could feel my heart beginning to crack. Right down the center, breaking off all the pieces of me that were my father, all of the memories…”

I loved parts like that. But in addition to these better-written sentences and scenes, there were also many things that irked me. Many of them were small things, I know, but they still felt grating when taken together. Things like: spelling errors, corny puns, inconsistencies, choppy and confusing dialogue, repetition, or the way Florence referred to coffee as “zoom zoom juice," "battery fuel," or “battery acid.” Need I remind you that she was 28? Plus, the book was sometimes just a little too meta for me in its conversations about writing, publishing, and scene-making.
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