🌸👻 Book Spotlight: The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston
Genre: Contemporary Romance • Paranormal • Rom-Com

☕ Book Details & Rating
Format: Audiobook
Standalone
Year Published: 2022
Page Count: 368
Rating: ☕☕☕☕ (4 Coffees!)

☕ Coffee Pairing
Perfect Sip: Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew with a Splash of Cinnamon
Why it Works: This drink is smooth and comforting but has a little unexpected twist—just like a romance with a ghost. It’s bittersweet but warm, matching the book’s themes of grief, healing, and rediscovering love.

About The Book

Florence Day is a ghostwriter for one of the biggest names in romance, but after a crushing heartbreak she’s lost all faith in love. When her father dies unexpectedly, she’s called back to her hometown—one she’s been trying to escape for a decade—to handle his funeral and face her complicated family.

What she doesn’t expect is to see a ghost. And not just any ghost—the spirit of her new editor shows up at her family’s funeral home. With grief, unfinished business, and a dash of supernatural romance swirling together, Florence must navigate love, loss, and what it really means to move on.

Heartfelt, funny, and a little magical, The Dead Romantics blends small-town charm, grief, and second chances into a fresh and moving paranormal rom-com.

My Thoughts

The Dead Romantics was surprisingly deeper than I expected. I honestly picked it up because it was billed as a rom-com—I needed something lighter after finishing Theme Music. Spoiler alert: this wasn’t the book for that. But despite not being the breezy escape I was expecting, it was still a fantastic read. I feel that the romance really took a back seat to the grief of the book. The romance added to the look on grief. It added insight from another perspective and Ben gave Florence someone to talk to about how she was feeling. When going through the process of grieving it can help to have an outside shoulder to lean on. Sometime we feel that we can’t burden our family with our feelings because they are going through it too.

I’d added this book to my TBR months ago and remembered only the basic synopsis. Had I remembered that it dealt with unexpected parental loss, I probably would have picked another book that week—the week I read The Dead Romantics was the anniversary of my mom’s unexpected death. I’m not a crier by any means, and this book almost got me. Ashley Poston nails the emotions of losing someone you love and the surreal way life keeps moving around you.

“The sun had set, but it still bled reds and oranges into the horizon like a watercolor painting, and my dad was dead.”
— Ashley Poston, The Dead Romantics

Poston beautifully captures how grief shows up differently for each member of Florence’s family. Her mother carries a quiet strength—sad but at peace, grounded in the belief that her husband lived a full life. Alice, Florence’s sister, throws herself into her work at the family funeral home, channeling her emotions into action while nursing resentment over Florence’s decade-long absence. Her brother, Carver, tries to hold everyone together, focusing on helping where he can. Florence, meanwhile, takes it upon herself to fulfill her father’s final wishes—no matter how odd they may be—determined to shoulder that burden alone. But as she connects with Ben, her father’s friends, and even some faces from her past, she begins to realize that grief doesn’t have to be carried in silence, and that love—like loss—binds a community together.

Florence’s ability to see ghosts adds a fresh, poignant layer to the story. It’s a gift she shares with her late father, one that allows her to speak truths she might otherwise keep buried. Through her conversations with Ben, that supernatural connection becomes deeply human—unconventional, yes, but honest and heartfelt. Poston balances humor and heartbreak beautifully, blending sharp wit with tender reflection to create a story that lingers long after the final page.

The language at times bordered on too much for my taste, which occasionally pulled me out of the story. And while this isn’t a spicy book overall, there’s one scene involving the ghost element that made me uncomfortable—not my cup of tea. I also guessed the twist from the moment it was introduced and found myself practically yelling at the book every time it came up. Okay, I was actually yelling. That said, it was still fun to watch how Poston got to the twist and tied everything together. Without these factors, this easily could’ve been a 5-star read for me.

Final Thoughts

This book hit me harder than I expected. What I thought would be a lighthearted rom-com turned into something deeply emotional and surprisingly personal. I picked it up during the anniversary week of my mom’s passing, and Florence’s grief mirrored so much of what I’ve felt myself—the strange mix of numbness, longing, and those moments where the world keeps spinning like nothing’s changed, even though everything has.

The romance was sweet and meaningful, but for me, it took a quiet step back to let the story of loss and healing take center stage. And maybe that’s why it stuck with me. Ashley Poston captured the ache of missing someone so vividly that I found myself blinking back tears more than once. It reminded me that grief isn’t just sadness—it’s love that doesn’t know where to go. At 4 coffees, this one left me smiling through the almost-tears and thinking about it long after I’d closed the book.