R.H. Walker, Author

(Cover image by Aleksandr Popov on Unsplash)

Introduction

I have been reading a lot of romance lately. To an almost disturbing degree.

It all started when my book club decided to read Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal back in February. I had read the first couple of books maybe a decade ago, but upon this reread I decided I wanted to finish the series, so I did. In three days. Then I started reading and rereading love stories– mostly contemporary, but some fantasy, some sci-fi, and some historical too, I didn’t care. Just as long as they had a strong romantic subplot of some kind. In the 123 books I’ve read since February 20, 2025 (the day I finished my reread of Shades of Milk and Honey), 97 of those have either been in the romance genre, or were chosen by me specifically for their romantic subplot.

The reading is not out of character for me. Sure, this is a level of voracious consumption I have not experienced since I was in middle school, but I still read more than the average (read: sane) adult. It’s not that big of a surprise. But the romance? Now that’s a little more curious.

Not because I hate romance or anything. I’ve seen (and even liked) all the Disney princess movies. I served my time in the Jane Austen apologist army. I grew up in Utah during the golden age of fairytale retelling authors like Shannon Hale and Jessica Day George. I own DVD copies of all my favorite rom-coms. Hell, the third book I reviewed for By Writers For Writers was Romancing the Beat, literally the manual on “how to write kissing books.” But I’ve also spent a lot of time over the past few years trying to get away from romance in media. There are a million reasons this is true, and I don’t want to psychoanalyze myself here because I have other points to make, but it boils down to this: I felt saturated in romance, and I was starting to get sick of it. I wanted to read other things. For a long time, I did.

So why this sudden return to form?

I don’t know, and actually I don’t care that much. It’s a phase like any other, one that is remarkably easy to feed thanks to the popularity of romance in recent years (I’m never lacking for recommendations). Instead, I’m much more interested to talk about what I found in my return to the genre.

Specifically, I want to talk about the works of Ashley Poston.

Why Do I Care?

I loved the books I’m about to talk about. It’s as simple as that. I wanted to explore what exactly worked for me and what it would take to try and recreate it. I’m simply fascinated by what Poston was able to accomplish, and I deeply respect her for it.

Additionally, I’ve read a lot of good romance and a lot of bad romance over the past few months. I’m at a stage creatively where I’m trying to soak up every bit of good I can. An exercise like this, dissecting authors’ works and searching for the bits I like, is a valuable tool. So let’s break this down.

***MAJOR SPOILER WARNING*** I am about to go into heavy, heavy detail about three of Ashley Poston’s works: The Dead Romantics, The Seven Year Slip, and A Novel Love Story. I will be spoiling plot elements from each of these in order to discuss shared themes across her work, why those themes are so interesting to me, and a list of rules to take this collection of themes and potentially turn it into an entirely new trope. I highly recommend all three books, but as always I strongly encourage you to check the content warnings at the links above before reading. If you want to read the books and avoid spoilers, click off now, go read them, and then come back to join this fun discussion. Otherwise, let’s get into it.

Magical Realism: A Primer

All three of these books fall into the contemporary romance genre– meaning they are primarily focused on a love story, end with a Happily Ever After, and are set in the modern day– but they’re also classed as magical realism. This made my fantasy-loving ears perk up.

Simply stated, magical realism imposes supernatural elements over otherwise normal life. The genre has deep roots in Latin American literature, with authors like Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Laura Esquivel, and Isabel Allende being strong contributors, but it has grown to international popularity in recent years.

Poston’s works are no different– in The Dead Romantics, the main character can see and speak to ghosts. The Seven Year Slip is about an apartment that can take you back in time. And in A Novel Love Story, our protagonist finds herself in the world of her favorite romance series. None of these elements are explained beyond their utility: we do not know why, we do not know how. We only know that they exist. (This is commonly referred to as a “soft” magic system.)

This in itself was enough to pull me in. Magic realism contemporary romance? Sign me up, sounds like a blast.

But then I actually read them. And what I found was so intriguing that I’ve been thinking about it for a month straight and haven’t been able to let it go.

Minecraft End Poem

There are two characteristics that set Poston’s work apart to me. The first is really just an overwhelming love for her characters.

It comes through in every pore of the work– Poston feels such a deep fondness for her characters that it’s impossible to ignore. Every single thing she puts them through is a push, an opportunity to grow and improve, so that by the time they reach they end they will be the people they need to be in order to stay together. The entire time I was reading her work I could just hear the last bit of the Minecraft End Poem by Julian Gough:

and the universe said I love you

and the universe said you have played the game well

and the universe said everything you need is within you

and the universe said you are stronger than you know

and the universe said you are the daylight

and the universe said you are the night

and the universe said the darkness you fight is within you

and the universe said the light you seek is within you

and the universe said you are not alone

and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing

and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code

and the universe said I love you because you are love.

That’s what reading Poston’s work feels like to me. She is fate, she is the universe, the god at work in the world of the book. Why do all of the elements exist? Because she decreed them to be, and she will manipulate the forces of the universe to bring those characters the love they deserve, because she loves them.

The second characteristic is a natural consequence of this love, and her ultimate goal to get her characters what they need. It just may not seem like it at first.

Bug Jar

Have you ever tried to make a terrarium for a bug? I absolutely have. More than once I remember putting dirt, sticks, leaves, and water in a mason jar, then punching air holes in the flat metal top with a hammer and nail (with supervision from my mom, of course– I was seven). The bugs never lasted more than an afternoon (at my mom’s insistence we’d always turn them back outside after a couple of hours), but the memories remain.

Reading about a male lead from an Ashley Poston novel is like watching a child do all of that work, gently tip the bug inside, screw on that air-holed top . . . and then violently shake the jar.

For example:

(If you seriously don’t want spoilers but kept reading anyways, this is your last chance to bail before I ruin some pretty major twists.)

In The Dead Romantics, the male lead Benji experiences a traumatic accident, and shows up as a ghost on the doorstep of our female lead, Florence. He also happens to be her new editor– she’s a ghostwriter, publishing romance books under the name of Benji’s deceased grandmother. And to make things that tiny bit worse, Florence has fallen out of love with love, and is struggling to write the final book in her contract. As they bond and fall in love, both Benji and Florence have to contend with the fact that they will never actually be able to be together (because, as previously stated, that man is a ghost.) (Don’t worry, it turns out he’s fine, he was just in a coma.)

In The Seven Year Slip, the male lead Iwan falls in love with the female lead, Clementine, who is from the future. Seven years in the future, if the title didn’t tip you off. As Clementine bounces between the two times, falling in love with Iwan and trying to reconcile him with the man he’s become seven years in the future, Iwan is forced to wait: wait to reunite with her, wait for her to fall in love with his past self, and wait even longer still to discover that he’s still worth loving, even though he’s changed.

And in A Novel Love Story, the male lead Anders is trapped in the fictional town, which was created by his recently-deceased author fiancée, and spends his days (actually the same day, over and over again), trying to care for her characters. This nightmare is more self-inflicted than the other two– a desperate, quixotic hope to preserve the life’s work she dedicated to him, while suffering under the monotony of the Groundhog Day-esque loop the town is stuck in. It’s only when Elsy (the female lead) shows up that things start changing. And while it’s a relief for Anders not to have to live the same day over and over again, it’s also terrifying, because he doesn’t want to let the memory of his dead fiancée fade into obscurity. He doesn’t want her work to be for nothing.

Angst

Are you starting to see what I mean about shaking the jar? There’s an almost clinical fascination with angst and suffering in Poston’s works, especially when it comes to her men. They are trapped in personalized prisons, whether by some twist of fate or by their own free will, and are not able to find their way out without the help of the female leads.

Make no mistake, the female leads are suffering too, often trapped in the same or similar prisons, but invariably the women have been the ones that hold the key to end both parties’ suffering. It feels almost like an inversion of the damsel-in-distress trope: the women hold the tools to self-actualize and do something about the situation, while the men are forced to wait in the tower and hope for rescue.

The rescue always invariably comes, thanks to that first characteristic. Yes, Poston is creating intricate torture chambers filled with emotional undertows for these characters, but she is always sending the exact right person to save them, too. She loves them, but in order to get their happily-ever-afters they have to change, and she loves them enough to let them suffer in the circumstances that will create that change, instead of just allowing them to stay stagnant. That’s how it always supposed to work, but Poston has stumbled on something truly special.

Another fascinating caveat is that the angst IS the plot. It’s not a frightening moment, it’s the entire premise. The characters don’t just experience the fear of the supernatural for a short time, they experience hours, days, weeks of dread in the face of a seemingly uncaring universe. They spent hours side by side, mutually gazing into the abyss, before choosing to turn away and return to life. And the universe, in all her love, lets them go. Tell me that doesn’t lighten your heart just a little bit.

Man in Jar

I’d like to formally codify this style of Poston’s as a trope, and search for elements of it in other media in hopes of bringing this unique mix of love and angst to more media. I’m calling it “Man in Jar”, a reference to my little bug terrarium analogy, but also a reference to the alchemical conception of the homunculus: a fully formed human being, alchemically made and kept in a glass or a flask. It’s largely a character trope, but obviously there are also plot elements that will need to be included to truly qualify.

Here’s what we can look for to help codify the “Man in Jar” trope:

• character is a lead or main character, but does not have to be a protagonist or a point-of-view character
• character is placed in magical distress, whether emotionally, mentally, or physically taxing, to the point of causing real stoppage to their growth, actualization, and/or improvement. This magical distress is directly tied to a character flaw that they will need to overcome
• the magical element itself cannot have a face; there is no evil wizard keeping them hostage. They must fall into this situation by fate and/or fatal flaw
• the magical element itself must also be central to the overall plot. It cannot simply be one moment; the characters must first find a way to live with it before they can escape it.
• a second lead/main character is able to find them in their distress, and begins to help them (whether intentionally or not)
• after a fight the two characters will attempt to go their separate ways, only to find that they are stuck with each other now
• characters can only escape the magically distressing scenario when one or both of them has learned a lesson directly correlated to that character flaw as described earlier

Other Potential Candidates

The whole reason I’m writing this post is because I found something unique in Poston’s work that I wish other authors would try to explore, but there are some properties that I think fit certain portions of the criteria, and also books I haven’t gotten to that may fit the criteria based on synopses and reviews.

Things I’ve Seen/Read That May Fit:

• The Good Place. Despite being set in the afterlife this feels more magical realism than fantasy, and I think it’s an excellent study for this trope. The way all four main characters struggle to become better people, against the cosmic whims of creatures higher than them, but are ultimately proven right, fits right in with what I’ve described.
• Stranger Than Fiction. Meta-fiction is such a good fit for this trope, and this is the platonic ideal to me. Harold’s journey to try to change his story is heart-rending, and with Emma Thompson’s character’s final decision, you can’t deny that his creator’s love is there.
• Severance. Don’t worry, magical realism comes in science fiction flavors too. This is such an excellent show, and it’s doing the angst aspect really well, what with Irving’s story and what we learned about Mark and his family in the second season. The discussion between innie Mark and outie Mark really underscores the idea of love for me, weird as that may seem– they both empathize with each other, but their existences are diametrically opposed, and both will essentially be erased if they manage to succeed in recoupling. What would happen then, especially in terms of their separate relationships? It hurts because there’s no easy answer, and I LOVE that for a man-in-jar trope.
• Everything Everywhere All At Once. Another excellent meta-fiction entry, it swings wildly between absurd science fiction/fantasy elements and a tender narrative about a mother/daughter relationship. A different type of relationship than seen in Poston’s work to be sure, but no less a heartbreaking and beautiful portrayal of familial love.
• The Truman Show. Another meta-fiction entry, possibly even more meta than others because of what is has to say about the love between creator and creation in exploring the relationship between Truman and Christoff.

Things I Have Not Yet Seen/Read That May Fit:

• Groundhog Day. I literally referenced this film above, but despite that I still haven’t seen it all the way through, and can’t necessarily recommend it as an example? Still, prototypically, it checks basically all of the boxes.
• Palm Springs. A very similar time-loop premise to Groundhog Day, with the twist that multiple people are stuck, not just the main character.
• One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. Another book with a time-travel element, about a girl who falls in love with a girl she meets on the subway in NYC, only to realize that her crush is from the 1970s, and lost in time.
• In Five Years by Rebecca Searle. Another time-travel element, this time about a woman who travels five years in her future, only to realize her life has not gone the way she wanted it to.
• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Not sure about the potential romantic elements of this one, but from the description the navigating of the labyrinth fits nicely in with our “magical distress” elements.
• A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams. From what I’ve heard this has some magical realism elements, and has gathered multiple comparisons to Seven Year Slip, so it seems like it will fit right in!

Conclusion

In conclusion, read more romance? It’s nice to be reminded that there is goodness and kindness in the world on occasion, and if you’re not normally a romance reader you might find something unique that appeals to you.

Additionally, if you’re interested in writing, I encourage you to engage in similar breakdowns like these on your own. Find something you like, or even something you dislike, and then ask yourself why, and use the information to keep improving.

What do you think of this breakdown of Poston’s work? Do you agree? Can you think of any other examples that might fit the list? I’d love to hear any thoughts you have.

Thanks for reading!