Fans of Brigadoon (or Schmigadoon!) will love A Novel Love Story, the third romance novel for adult readers from Ashley Poston (The Dead Romantics; The Seven Year Slip). English professor Eileen "Elsy" Merriweather is gloomily setting off for her annual summer reading retreat alone, since the rest of her "Super Smutty Book Club" canceled this year. Her trip gets even worse when her car dies during a rainstorm and she is forced to stay overnight in a little town in upstate New York. But as her visit unfolds, Elsy finds herself increasingly reminded of Eloraton, the setting of a book series by her favorite author, Rachel Flowers, who died died after writing four books of a planned five-book series. It dawns on Elsy that the town is Eloraton, and she's inexplicably stuck inside the unfinished fifth novel.
In addition to meeting all her favorite characters, Elsy also meets the handsome, curmudgeonly Anders, the irresistible, green-eyed proprietor of the town's charming bookshop--who is not from Flowers's series. Unsure why she and Anders have been trapped in the town and worried she might be changing the plots of the books after she accidentally nudges a couple into a breakup, Elsy decides to tread carefully with both the residents of Eloraton and her attraction to Anders. Clever, nostalgic, and sure to appeal to any bookworm who has ever wished they could hang out with the characters from their favorite books, A Novel Love Story is a charming escape. --Jessica Howard, freelance book reviewer