Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Books on My Summer 2025 to-Read List.
It’s impossible to keep up with all the books I have my eyes on! Here are the top 10 I most want to make time for… preferably for reading outdoors, in the sun, with warm breezes and a big iced coffee to go with them!
Writing Mr. Wrong by Kelley Armstrong
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab
The Poppy Fields by Nikki Erlick
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
The Last Wizards’ Ball by Charlaine Harris
Totally and Completely Fine by Elissa Sussman
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher
The Fair Folk by Su Bristow
What are you planning to read this summer? Please share your TTT links!
Title: A Novel Love Story Author: Ashley Poston Publisher: Berkley Publication date: June 25, 2024 Length: 384 pages Genre: Contemporary fiction Source: Purchased Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
A professor of literature finds herself caught up in a work of fiction… literally.
Eileen Merriweather loves to get lost in a good happily-ever-after. The fictional kind, anyway. Because at least imaginary men don’t leave you at the altar. She feels safe in a book. At home. Which might be why she’s so set on going to her annual book club retreat this year—she needs good friends, cheap wine, and grand romantic gestures—no matter what.
But when her car unexpectedly breaks down on the way, she finds herself stranded in a quaint town that feels like it’s right out of a novel…
Because it is.
This place can’t be real, and yet… she’s here, in Eloraton, the town of her favorite romance series, where the candy store’s honey taffy is always sweet, the local bar’s burgers are always a little burnt, and rain always comes in the afternoon. It feels like home. It’s perfect—and perfectly frozen, trapped in the late author’s last unfinished story.
Elsy is sure that’s why she must be here: to help bring the town to its storybook ending.
Except there is a character in Eloraton that she can’t place—a grumpy bookstore owner with mint-green eyes, an irritatingly sexy mouth and impeccable taste in novels. And he does not want her finishing this book.
Which is a problem because Elsy is beginning to think the town’s happily-ever-after might just be intertwined with her own.
What book reader hasn’t dreamed of living inside a fictional world? Maybe entering a stone circle and falling through time to meet the Scot of our dreams, or getting invited to the ton‘s ultimate social event of the season?
What about finding ourselves in a cheerful small town that’s quaint and cute, has amazing cafes and shops, and where the townsfolk are immediately warm and welcoming to a complete stranger?
In Ashley’s Poston’s newest book, A Novel Love Story, main character Eileen (Elsy) gets to experience a dream come true when she gets lost on a road trip and finds herself in Eloraton, New York — a town that exists only in the pages of Elsy’s favorite romance series, Quixotic Falls.
Elsy has had her share of heartbreak and loneliness over the past several years, but has found refuge in the pages of Quixotic Falls — a series left unfinished after the tragic death of its author, Rachel Flowers. The series has been a solace to Elsy in her darkest days, as well as a source of joy. Through Quixotic Falls, Elsy met her book group, a random, quicky bunch of strangers who found connection in their shared love of this fictional world. But this year, the group’s planned one-week vacation has fallen apart, and only Elsy ends up traveling to their rental cabin — except she never arrives.
Instead, her car breaks down in a town that seems oddly familiar. With shock, she realizes that she’s in Eloraton, meeting the characters whose lives feel real to her. There’s Junie, the main character from book #1, and Ruby, the heroine of book #2. In fact, Elsy can place everyone she encounters, except the grumpy bookstore owner she keeps running into (literally — she hits him with her car during a rainstorm).
Elsy soon learns from Anders, the bookstore owner, that no one in Eloraton knows that they’re fictional, and that they’re also unaware that they’re living in stasis. Each day is the same as the previous one. Yearning lovers never quite manage to connect, and household problems never get fixed. As Elsy comes to realize, the unchanging status quo is due to Rachel Flowers’s death while working on the final book in the series. For all of these beloved characters, their stories remain unfinished — but with Elsy’s arrival, tiny changes suddenly begin to appear. Elsy has to figure out her role in all this, how Anders fits in… and whether the connection she feels between herself and Anders could possibly be real, considering they’re living in a fictional world.
A Novel Love Story has a Brigadoon-esque feel — our main character stumbles into a town that can’t possibly exist, cut off from the world that she knows, yet feeling more vibrant and real to her than the life she left behind.
This town looked like every good part of every lovely town I’d ever seen, all jigsawed into one.
Readers shouldn’t worry too much about the how and why of it all — a hearty suspension of disbelief is required. If you’re going to enjoy this book, you have to simply accept “because magic” as an explanation and move on.
Themes of purpose and finding courage inform Elsy’s experiences. After being badly hurt in a previous relationship, she’s lost confidence, no longer trusting herself to take chances. She goes with what’s safe, in her work life and in her relationships (or lack thereof). But in Eloraton, she starts to realize that playing it safe isn’t working for her, and isn’t bringing her joy or any sort of truly fulfilling life. Both in Eloraton and back in the real world, she’ll have to take chances if she wants to be happy.
There’s a lot to like about A Novel Love Story. The phrasing can be spot-on perfect, with sentences that feel specifically crafted to appeal to readers who love the world of romance fiction.
Sometimes, a book can change your life. It’s hard to explain that to someone who doesn’t read, or who has never felt their heart bend so strongly toward a story that it might just snap in two. Some books are a comfort, some a reprieve, others a vacation, a lesson, a heartbreak. I’d met countless stories by the time I read a book that changed my life.
And here’s an example I just adore:
I’d met plenty of handsome men before, whose eyelashes were just as long, and who wore scars like pickup lines.
Elsy’s sense of deliberate denial is also delightful to read:
Today, he wore a loose heather-gray T-shirt and dark blue jeans that he most definitely looked horrible in. He didn’t have an ass for jeans, I told myself, and I didn’t take note of the way he fit in them. Not at all.
At the same time, the book seems to suffer at times from sloppy editing. I stumbled across sentences throughout the book that I had to read more than once, because something in them just didn’t work. And then there are plot oddities: On one page about midway through, Elsy is in the town diner:
“Ruby,” I called, putting down a ten for my lunch and scooting out of the booth.
She follows Ruby to the door so they can talk, and Ruby agrees to walk out with her.
But, as they leave, this happens:
So I put a ten down on the table for my food and followed her out of the Grumpy Possum and down the sidewalk toward the center of town.
Hmmm. Either someone in copyediting missed this, or Elsy overpaid for her lunch!
That aside, the story itself suffers under the weight of its “because magic” premise. I don’t need 100% logic or a scientific explanation to appreciate a fanciful romance, but the internal logic of the story felt to me like it was trying too hard. Elsy’s acceptance in the town, her romance with Anders, the explanation for the town’s existence and the characters’ lives — it’s all a bit crazy-glued together, and ultimately, the randomness of it all didn’t quite work for me.
However, I still found plenty to enjoy, despite the book’s flaws. Who can’t relate to Elsy’s sentiments about her surreal experience?
Every reader I’d ever known had wanted nothing more than to fall into the arms of a book boyfriend, some fictional Darcy, a shade of a Byronic hero, all their own. So I did.
Her real-life emotional distress feels all too relatable as well:
I was tired of being stagnant, I thought. I wanted to be a main character in my own life again.
While Elsy’s experience in Eloraton isn’t all that believable, the sadness of her past and her fear about taking chances again feel true-to-life, and it’s lovely to see her take steps to start risking her heart and embracing a more challenging future.
Overall, I’m happy to have read A Novel Love Story. While I didn’t love it as much as the previous two novels by this author (The Dead Romantics and The Seven Year Slip), I still found it a fast, engaging story with some unexpected, creative twists. And now, I’m looking forward to checking out Ashley Poston’s upcoming 2025 release, Sounds Like Love!
Title: The Seven Year Slip Author: Ashley Poston Publisher: Berkley Publication date: June 27. 2023 Length: 352 pages Genre: Contemporary fiction/romance Source: Purchased Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it.
So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: stay busy, work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it.
And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.
Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.
Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.
After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.
An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics.
It’s been a while since I’ve read a really satisfying time slip novel… and The Seven Year Slip absolutely delivers.
Clementine works as a book publicist, and has plans worked out for every aspect of her life. Her aunt Analea — vibrant, spontaneous, vivacious, always provided the spark in Clementine’s life, whisking her away for world travels, ready to explore, to taste, to try, to experience. But after Analea’s death, the joy has leached out of Clementine’s life, and moving into the apartment bequeathed to her by her aunt just drives home how much she’s lost.
Until she returns home one day, not to her stacks of unpacked boxes, but to the apartment as it was during Analea’s lifetime… and with a very cute guy zipping around the place, offering to make her dinner. Iwan informs Clementine that his mother is a friend of her aunt’s, and her aunt has offered to sublet the apartment to him for the summer while she’s off on a journey with her niece — a journey which Clementine and Analea took seven years in the past.
Clementine finds herself reeling — but not entirely unprepared. After all, all her life, her aunt has insisted that the apartment is magic, and even told of her own seven-year-slip romance at a younger age. Clementine never truly believed the stories, of course, but now, the proof is right there in front of her eyes.
She and Iwan connect over food, family, and dreams, and they enjoy each other’s company immensely. Still, she knows that once she leaves the apartment, she’ll be back to her regular life, and who knows if the magic will work more than once?
The plot of The Seven Year Slip unfolds deliciously, with clues and interludes and interactions woven together to form a wonderful, romantic, hopeful whole. For Clementine, so immersed in grief and loss, meeting Iwan is the spark she needs to rediscover her creative side once again and rethink her true sources of happiness. We see the story through her POV, but Iwan is a lovely character and we get hints of what his side of this magical yet strange experience must have been.
The Seven Year Slip is best experienced without too many expectations or foreknowledge. The book zips by, and the plot threads come together in such a rich and unexpected way. The characters are engaging, and getting to see them as different versions of themselves is really a treat.
This story exists in the same world as the author’s previous novel, The Dead Romantics, but it’s not a sequel — there’s a nod to some of the people from that book, but if you haven’t read that one yet, it won’t take away from The Seven Year Slip at all. (Although, it is VERY good, so check that one out too!)
I really enjoyed The Seven Year Slip, and recommend it highly! It’s a perfect summer read, full of hope and love, friendship, family, and romance. After reading this author’s YA Once Upon a Con trilogy and now two of her adult novels, I can definitely say that Ashley Poston’s books are must-reads!
Title: Bookish and the Beast(Once Upon a Con, #3) Author: Ashley Poston Narrator: Caitlin Kelly, Curry Whitmire Publisher: Quirk Books Publication date: March 29, 2016 Print length: 288 pages Audio length: 7 hours, 21 minutes Genre: Young adult fiction Source: Digital review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley; audiobook purchased from Audible Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
In the third book in Ashley Poston’s Once Upon a Con series, Beauty and the Beast is retold in the beloved Starfield universe.
Rosie Thorne is feeling stuck—on her college application essays, in her small town, and on that mysterious General Sond cosplayer she met at ExcelsiCon. Most of all, she’s stuck in her grief over her mother’s death. Her only solace was her late mother’s library of rare Starfield novels, but even that disappeared when they sold it to pay off hospital bills.
On the other hand, Vance Reigns has been Hollywood royalty for as long as he can remember—with all the privilege and scrutiny that entails. When a tabloid scandal catches up to him, he’s forced to hide out somewhere the paparazzi would never expect to find him: Small Town USA. At least there’s a library in the house. Too bad he doesn’t read.
When Rosie and Vance’s paths collide and a rare book is accidentally destroyed, Rosie finds herself working to repay the debt. And while most Starfield superfans would jump at the chance to work in close proximity to the Vance Reigns, Rosie has discovered something about Vance: he’s a jerk, and she can’t stand him. The feeling is mutual.
But as Vance and Rosie begrudgingly get to know each other, their careful masks come off—and they may just find that there’s more risk in shutting each other out than in opening their hearts.
It’s no surprise that Bookish and the Beast is completely charming. After the delightful Geekerella and the lovable The Prince and the Fangirl, how can Ashley Poston miss?
For those unfamiliar with the Once Upon a Con series, these books take us into the world of Starfield fandom, as devoted fans cross paths with stars of the movie reboot, all structured along the lines of classic fairy tales with a modern twist.
Starfield is a (fictional) cult TV series with a huge, obsessed fan base. In Geekerella, Starfield is being rebooted as a movie, and fans are up in arms over what they see as questionable casting and a fear that their beloved characters will be sacrificed in the name of box office success.
Two books later, the Starfield movie franchise has completely filming the second movie, and the fans are ecstatic. Unfortunately, the bad boy of the movie’s cast, Vance Reigns, who plays anti-hero General Sond, can’t stay out of the tabloids. At age 17, he parties hard and gets in trouble endlessly. Finally, fed up and wanting some serious damage control, his parents arrange for him to hide out in a small town in North Carolina at the home of the film’s director, along with a guardian to keep him in check. And Vance is not happy.
Meanwhile, in the same town, Rosie Thorne is entering her senior year of high school. She has two amazing best friends, Annie and Quinn, and lives with her dad (a former punk rocker who causes her friends to swoon, and who they refer to as Space Dad — because “he’s so beautiful that his beauty is out of this world…”. Rosie lost her mother the previous year, and she’s both still deeply grieving and also sick of everyone seeing her as the girl with the dead mother and nothing more.
Rosie and her dad’s finances are shaky, having spent all their savings and then some on medical bills, but they get by. A chance encounter with Vance’s dog leads her into his orbit, and after she accidentally ruins a rare Starfield book from his borrowed house’s library, she agrees to pay it off by working in the house, tasked with organizing and cataloging the cartons and shelves full of books.
What neither Rosie nor Vance realize is that they’ve met once before, at ExcelsiCon, the annual convention dedicated to Starfield. Wearing masks, they spent one magical evening together, but left without disclosing their true names or faces. Neither has been able to shake the memory of their first meeting or the feelings it stirred up, but both have accepted that they’ll never know who that special person was.
Until…
Well. It’s a Beauty and the Beast retelling, so you know where this is going. The house where Vance is living is known locally as the “Castle House” — a vanity project of some millionaire, not usually inhabited, with moats and turrets, located at the end of a hidden lane through the trees. Rosie stumbles upon it (at night, of course) while trying to rescue a dog that ran in front of her car, and when she follows the dog (uninvited and unannounced) into the spooky, dark house, she runs right into Vance, who is outraged by the intrusion and behaves… um… beastly.
I loved all the little B&tB references, from a diner waitress named Mrs. Potts to the rose symbolism to the library as a way to a young woman’s heart. Little lines thrown in made me smile:
They probably got sick of being the middle of nowhere and left to have grand adventures in the great wide somewhere.
… and also:
… it’s pretty, and at least — unlike most of the houses around here — it doesn’t use antlers in all of the decorating.
Then there’s the story’s villain, Garrett Taylor, a handsome, popular jock who can’t believe someone like Rosie could even dream of turning him down. Like Gaston, he’s decided Rosie is the prettiest, therefore the best, and he deserves the best. His persistence goes from annoying to overboard to damaging, and he simply won’t listen to Rosie’s rejections.
The story is sweet and clever, and keeps the Beauty & the Beast storyline going without it ever feeling forced or overdone. At the same time, Rosie and Vance are fleshed-out characters with inner lives, each dealing with pain and emotional challenges, each striving to find a new future.
The author shows us Rosie’s grief and the depths of her loss, and how dramatically losing a parent can devastate a teen’s entire world, leaving her feeling not just the loss, but also the isolation and the rootlessness that comes with being different and losing a mother’s love and support.
I really loved this book, and enjoyed the through-story bits that continue expanding the world of Starfield, its characters, and its plot twists. One of the characters refers to Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, and like Fangirl, the story within the story always leaves me wanting more. Might Ashley Poston actually write a Starfield book? Because I’d love to get more Carmindor, Amara, and Sond into my reading life!
The audiobook is really well done, with two different narrators — one for Rosie, one for Vance. They keep it light and entertaining, and let me feel like I was listening to the characters telling their own stories.
I have one complaint about the audiobook, and it’s a pretty big one that, days later, still makes no sense to me. Vance’s last name is Reigns, which I assume is pronounced like “rains” — there are even some tabloid headline puns about Vance needing to be “reigned” in.
So why, then, does the Rosie narrator (and occasionally the Vance narrator too) pronounce his last name as “re-gins” (with a hard G, kind of like begins, but with the accent on the first syllable). I couldn’t figure out what I was listening to at first, and had to go back to the print version to see if I’d misunderstood. Like, is Vance Reigns his stage name, but the family name is actually Reagans or something? Nope, it’s Reigns throughout the book.
So why does the audiobook have a different pronunciation? No idea. But it’s super annoying, and constantly distracting. Did they finish recording, realize it was wrong, and decided not to go back and fix it? Honestly, it makes no sense at all.
I realize I’m harping on about this, but it was distracting throughout the entire audiobook, so as much as I loved it overall, this one thing made it really frustrating too.
Putting that aside… I wholeheartedly recommend Bookish and the Beast. I think this is my favorite of the Con books, and I really hope there are more to come! And while this could possibly be read on its own, I really recommend reading the books in order, because you might not get the Starfield elements and what they mean otherwise.
When geek girl Elle Wittimer sees a cosplay contest sponsored by the producers of Starfield, she has to enter. First prize is an invitation to the ExcelsiCon Cosplay Ball and a meet-and-greet with the actor slated to play Federation Prince Carmindor in the reboot. Elle’s been scraping together tips from her gig at the Magic Pumpkin food truck behind her stepmother’s back, and winning this contest could be her ticket out once and for all—not to mention a fangirl’s dream come true.
Teen actor Darien Freeman is less than thrilled about this year’s ExcelsiCon. He used to live for conventions, but now they’re nothing but jaw-aching photo sessions and awkward meet-and-greets. Playing Federation Prince Carmindor is all he’s ever wanted, but the diehard Starfield fandom has already dismissed him as just another heartthrob. As ExcelsiCon draws near, closet nerd Darien feels more and more like a fake—until he meets a girl who shows him otherwise.
Oh my, this geeky Cinderella story is oodles and oodles of fun!
Elle is Cinderella — the unloved girl forced to wait hand and foot on her self-centered stepmother and awful twin stepsisters. Elle is still devastated by her father’s death, and seeks solace in the Starfield fandom, which she shared with her father and which helps her find meaning in life. She sees the cosplay contest as a possible path to freedom, with a prize that could help her fulfill her dream of escaping from her terrible life in Charleston and moving to LA to pursue a screenwriting career.
Elle is pretty disgusted by the casting of Darien in the lead role of Prince Carmindor. He’s a pretty-boy soap actor — how can he possibly do justice to such a noble, iconic character? She voices her opinion, loud and clear, on her Starfield-devoted blog… and suddenly, her followers and page views are through the roof.
Meanwhile, Elle and Darien meet-cute through an accidental text, and begin a texting relationship which escalates from silliness to true friendship and soul-baring, all the while not knowing each others’ true identity.
This book is charming and funny in all the right ways, and yet manages to be deeper and more serious than the title and cute cover art might suggest. Both Elle and Darien have serious issues to confront about self-image and being valued for who they are and finding a place to fit in. Elle’s situation is much more dire, of course, as she lives with people who don’t love her and make her life hell. But Darien’s life isn’t perfect either, as his sudden fame results in betrayal by his one close friend, being considered a poser in the fandom (even though he’s been a devoted fanboy for years), and having no privacy while having to constantly put on a public face in keeping with his star status.
The relationship between Elle and Darien is sweet and funny, but equally wonderful is Elle’s growing friendship with her coworker Sage, and her belated discovery that one of her stepsisters isn’t the awful person she thought she was.
Geekerella has all sorts of wonderful shout-outs to the world of cons and fandoms:
As the green room door disappears behind us, I give it one last forlorn glance when a guy with thick brown hair and an even browner coat catches my eye.
“Gail!” I skid to a stop. “I think I see Nathan F–”
Gail yanks me toward herlike a yo-yo. “You can get him to sign your first-edition Firefly comic later.”
The author allows the characters to voice what draws people to their fantasy worlds and makes them so important:
Of course it’s not real. I know it’s not real. It’s just as fake as the Styrofoam props they use and the cardboard sets and the tinny laser sounds and the ice cream machines they try to disguise as “data cores” — I know it’s all fake. But those characters — Carmindor, Princess Amara, Euci, and even the Nox King — they were my friends when everyone in the real world passed around rumors behind my back, called me weird, shoved me into lockers, and baited me into thinking I was beautiful only to push me away just before we kissed. They never abandoned me. They were loyal, honorable, caring, and smart.
And while I don’t usually mention author acknowledgments in reviews, I do love this passage from the author’s acknowledgements in Geekerella:
So I want to thank you. You, the reader. You, who cosplays and writes fanfiction and draws fanart and runs a forum and collects Funko-Pops and must have hardcovers for all of your favorite book series and frames for your autographed posters. You, who boldly goes.
Never give up on your dreams and never let anyone tell you that what you love is inconsequential or useless or a waste of time. Because if you love it? If that OTP or children’s card game or abridged series or YA book or animated series makes you happy?
That is never a waste of time. Because in the end we’re all just a bunch of weirdos standing in front of other weirdos, asking for their username.
Geekerella has a sweet teen love story as its central storyline, but it’s also a love letter to fandoms and geeky delights. And as a fangirl with Funko-Pops and hardcovers of my favorite book series and all sorts of random geeky toys and t-shirts, I could absolutely relate… even though my teen years are way in the rearview mirror by now
Definitely recommended for anyone who loves to dream of fantasy kingdoms and schools for magic and impossible universes. I just hope that the author will treat us to an expanded view into her made-up Starfield world, because I’d definitely like to know more!
A reading note: I read a finished copy of the book from the library, and not an ARC — and since it was a finished copy, I do need to say that the book could have used another copyediting pass. There are typos (like “use” instead of “us”) and missed words scattered here and there throughout the book, and they’re jarring. No one likes to be interrupted in their fictional pursuits by having to stop and figure out what a sentence is supposed to mean!
Bookshelf Fantasies 