The Ghost & Me: The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston
This book has gained some serious attention on #BookTok but I almost feel it’s due for a resurgence come spooky season next month. The premise is a ghost-writer named Florence who can talk to ghosts and falls in love with one. If you’re well-versed in this ghost-romance genre already (like myself), I’d relate the storyline more to “Just Like Heaven” (2005) than “Ghost” (1990). The initial attraction is there beforehand, but all the relationship growth happens post-mortem (or so we think). This book was funny, relatable, and just the right amount of steamy considering the love-interested was un-dead. There were also some major plot twists throughout the book, and while I saw most of them coming, they weren’t bad.
In the beginning, something I noticed almost immediately was the contagious humor and quality of writing in this book. “What do they feed you in New York—lettuce and depression.” Making a sexual euphemism out of “getting down to business (to defeat the Huns).” I was dying (pun intended). But the chapters were also a bit all over the place at first; hot intro to love interest, talking to ghosts, dad randomly dies, meet-cute and breakup with her ex, kiss love interest and he dies. How was I supposed to keep up? Every chapter took a very different direction and I felt almost jostled. And although each chapter stood well by itself, I felt myself trudging through this book until about halfway, just trying to understand and latch onto something.
I was super into Ben from Chapter 1. He was very obviously set up as the main love interest, with detailed descriptions and obvious tension. Maybe it’s the literary buff in me, but a male editor of a romance imprint? Totally swoon-worthy. And yet, when he died and the romance kept going I got the heebie-jeebies. Not only died. Hit by a car and heavily bleeding everywhere after they kissed and she ran because her father died. Super traumatic. No thank you. And then she related him to Josh from “The Hating Game” by Sally Thorne. How was I supposed to like him when the author relates him to that? In general, the frequent abnormal ghosts element felt a little odd considering everything else makes this a hyperrealistic contemporary romance novel. Almost as of the book didn’t super fit its own genre.
And yet, I really did like the chemistry between Ben and Florence. They seemed genuine (possibly because they’d met prior to his almost-death and haunting). It’s a gender-swap on the classic grumpy-guy cheery-girl romance trope. Turns out Ben liked Florence from the beginning. He wanted to kiss her from their first editors meeting. He liked her since the day she met Lee, at a publishing event wearing Louboutins. It’s one of my favorite tropes. The chemistry is almost never acted on but always there, lingering on the pages, holding the book together through the dull funeral-arrangement scenes. I think if there were in-between periods my interest would have faired better from the start. After her wakes from his coma (not dead!), she brings him her book with their names signed in it and while I don’t understand why that’s the reason he realizes their relationship was real, it’s cute.
4 stars
All in all, this book was funny, sweet, tension-inducing, and downright romantic for the most part, but when it wasn’t it was downright dull. The end chunk was amazing, but I can’t give it a full 5 knowing I struggled to get there.
