Well, this was a fun one. It’s not 100% perfect, but it’s damn close. A Novel Love Story is romantic, but not just about love – more about life. It’s a big, squishy love letter to writing, to romance, to fate and a romantic way of life.

Eileen (Elsy) Merriweather loves romance, but unfortunately it hasn’t turned out well for her in the real world, as her fiancé just ended their engagement a week before the ceremony. Hoping to refresh herself and get her homebody self outside, she heads off on her annual writer’s retreat. But then everyone – including her best friend – calls to cancel on her. Elsy decides to drive eighteen miles out of her way to be alone and lick her wounds in an off-the-grid cabin, but her car breaks down en route when she slams her breaks on to swerve out of the way of a handsome man.

This is where her horrendous luck takes a turn. Elsy decides to cool her heels in the lovely small town nearby – shocked to realize that suddenly, somehow, she has landed in her favorite fictional town, Eloratown, with its quaint city streets and the bookstore that’s beautiful. But Eloratown has ceased to be in the wake of the death of its author, who has left behind an unfinished manuscript. Elsy realizes she can help the characters left behind find their happy ending.

But why has the town brought Elsy here? Is it trying to drive her toward romantic happiness? Is that why she’s falling for grumpy Anders, the “mint green”-eyed bookstore owner who comes to the table bearing his own romantic scars and does not approve of the way that Elsy’s work is changing the place he loves? Or is it hoping to bring her to a predestined purpose that will save the whole of Eloratown?

There are some repetitive points here – you will learn oh, so many times, (too many times) that Anders has golden hair and mint-green eyes – but A Novel Love Story is darned good little book. Not as great as The Dead Romantics, tragically, but still a decent time.

Elsy is a likable heroine, and Anders an understandably grumpy hero. The book knows its Hallmark tropes and its cozy small town romance tropes, but it doesn’t mock those values and it’s not cruel when it makes reference to them. Instead, it’s about finding joy in those worlds, about finding your place in the larger one. And the romance is a slow-burner with a lot of beauty and affection to it.

Poston remains wise about the ways of words in the way other authors are not, which is what makes A Novel Love Story so compelling. Filled with zest for life and for reading, its magical realism makes it worth every single imperfection – to make the ending all the sweeter.