THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
Most Anticipated by Parade · Buzzfeed · Harper’s Bazaar · Elle · She Reads · The Seattle Times · BookRiot and more!
A professor of literature finds herself caught up in a work of fiction…literally, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Year Slip and The Dead Romantics.
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 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.
"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"--
