A professor of literature finds herself caught up in a work of fiction…literally, from the Eileen Merriweather knows a thing or two about romance. As a professor of literature, she teaches prestigious courses on history’s greatest romantics, but one week out of the year she abandons her dusty textbooks and makes a pilgrimage to the Hudson Valley with her best friend Pru to meet their Super Smutty Book Club in person, and celebrate the romance series that brought them together--Quixotic Falls. It’s a week of wine and happily-ever-afters. Or it’s supposed to be. Pru bails at the last minute, and Elsy winds up lost in Hudson Valley--alone. In a thunderstorm. When she takes shelter in a bookstore, she immediately gets on the bad side of its grumpy (and infuriatingly sexy) owner, and finds herself in a quaint town that feels like it’s right out of a book… Because it is. Eloraton can’t be real, and yet… she’s here. The town is everything she imagined from her favorite series, where the candy store’s honey taffy is always sweet, and the local bar’s burgers are always a little burnt, and rain always comes in the afternoon. It’s perfect. A place built on meet-cutes and storybook endings. Except, there’s something off in Eloraton. Because nothing changes, nothing moves, trapped in the last place the late author of Quixotic Falls left them. Which must be why Elsy is here: to find an ending to this last story, the one the author never finished. The only problem? The bookstore owner never wants the story to end, and he might be the one person who can help her imagine this final happily-ever-after. And maybe find one for herself.

Autorentext
Ashley Poston is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Dead Romantics and The Seven Year Slip. She writes stories about love and friendship and ever afters. A native to South Carolina, she now lives in a small grey house with her sassy cat and too many books. You can find her on the internet, somewhere, watching cat videos and reading fan-fiction.

Leseprobe
1

Country Roads

Iwas lost.

Not metaphorically-at least, I didn't think so-but physically lost, hundreds of miles from home, in the middle of nowhere.

No cell service. An outdated map. A gas tank running on empty.

Oh, and I was alone.

When I started this road trip yesterday, before eight hours on the interstate and a pit stop at a dinosaur-themed hotel, and eight more hours today, I didn't think I'd lose my way on the last leg of the journey. I was so close-the cabin where I'd be staying for the next week was within reach-but Google Maps kept glitching as I drove my way through Rip Van Winkle country, until my phone screen was nothing more than beige land and my little blue dot roamed, without a road, in the middle of nowhere.

I'd taken the same road trip with my best friend for the last two years to the same cabin in Rhinebeck, New York, to meet the same people in our Super Smutty Book Club. I shouldn't have gotten lost.

But this was a year of firsts.

Over head, angry-looking clouds rumbled with thunder, dark purple with the coming night and heavy with rain. I hoped the weather held up until I found the cabin, unearthed a bottle of wine from my back seat, and settled down in one of the rocking chairs on the front porch with a romance book in my hands.

The promise of a week of wine and happily ever afters had kept me sane all year, through boring English 101 classes with half-asleep students and AI-generated papers on Chaucer and colleagues who swore that War and Peace was a riveting read. The English department was rife with people who would love to talk to you for hours about Beowulf or modern literary theory or the intersectionality of postmodern texts. But for one week out of the year, I looked forward to shucking off my professorial robes and disappearing into the twisting roads that hugged the soft hills of the Catskills, and reading about impossible meet-cutes and grand romantic gestures, and no one would judge me for it.

And when everyone else pulled out because life got in the way, it was just going to be my best friend, Pru, and me-and that was perfect, too. I needed this. Pru didn't understand how much. No one did. So when she told me last week that she couldn't go, either, it surprised me. No, that was the wrong word-it disappointed me-but I didn't want it to show. I sat on the couch opposite her, The Great British Baking Show in the background, digging my fingers into the comforter I'd pulled over my legs because she always kept her and Jasper's apartment freezing.

"I'm sorry," she'd said, twisting the rings on her fingers nervously. Her dirty blond hair was done up in a sloppy ponytail, and she was already in her pajamas and fuzzy slippers. She was petite and perpetually sunburnt in the summers, with wide brown eyes and a scar on her chin where my teeth went into her face when we were twelve and trying to do backflips on a trampoline. Through  the crack in her open bedroom door, I could see her suitcase half-packed already with warm sweaters and cute knit hats. Definitely not summer apparel. "Jasper surprised me with a trip to Iceland, and this is the only time we can go because of, you know, his job," she gushed quickly, like saying it faster would make it hurt less-ripping a proverbial Band-Aid off a very hairy leg. "I know it's not ideal but he just told me. We just found out. And . . . we can all go to the cabin again next year?" The question dipped up, hopeful.

No, I wanted to tell her, but I couldn't quite muster up the word. No, we can't. I needed this. I still need this.

But if I said that, then what would happen? Nothing good. She would still go off to Iceland, and I'd be stuck exactly where I was. Besides, we both knew what Iceland meant: a proposal. Finally.

It was something she'd been waiting for for years.

So, what did it matter if she couldn't come to the cabin this year? It was nothing, really, in the face of what she had to look forward to. So I put on a smile and said, "Obviously. Next year we'll be back to normal."

"Absolutely," she promised, and she didn't suspect a thing. "Oh, and maybe this year we can all get on a video call together instead?"

"C'mon, Pru. You know if Jasper's taking you to Iceland, you won't have time to video call with anyone

Then I held up my hand and wiggled my bare wedding ring finger. "You know what he's gonna do."

My best friend quirmed anxiously. "He might not, and I know how much this trip means to you . . ."

"Go, have fun, don't think twice about it," I urged, draining my glass of wine as I stood to leave, because I didn't want her to see how upset I really was. Jasper was a pretty low-level attorney at his law firm, so he only had certain days off once in a blue moon, and this was a last-minute trip that he'd managed to snatch up for them. I would be a monster to be mad at that.

Prudence might've been able to sacrifice this trip, but I certainly couldn't. I was desperate for it-I needed to get drunk on cheap wine and cry over happily ever afters, even if I'd be the only one in the cabin this year.

So, in the summer of my thirty-second year, with no money and no prospects and one too many AI-generated papers waiting for me to grade for my college English 101 class, I set off on a sixteen-hour road trip alone.

I needed to get lost in a book.

More than I needed anything else.

Besides, it was the ten-year anniversary of the publication of Daffodil Daydreams by Rachel Flowers, and that was something that I wanted to celebrate. The author had passed away a few years ago, and her books had brought the book club together.

And, I think, deep down I just wanted to get away-no matter what.

On the sixteen-hour drive, I listened to Daffodil Dayd…