A Novel Love Story

Elsy and Junie talk about Eloraton and how the town’s famous grumpy possum—after which Ruby and Jake’s cafe is named—hasn’t been seen in months. Elsy sees how buildings and locations aside from the main businesses in the novels are blurred out, much like the menu at the cafe. Elsy tells Junie about her book club retreat and how she’s going alone, and at the bar, they learn from Gail that many people in town think that Elsy and Anders got into a fistfight. At the bar, Elsy also meets Will, the other main character of Daffodil Daydreams, and they tell her about how they think there is a haunted toilet at their bed and breakfast that makes horrible sounds, which Elsy doesn’t believe. She sees Anders, who has discovered that she is staying in town until Monday, and the two of them trade barbs again before Elsy leaves with Will and Junie.

On the way to the inn, Elsy mentions Pru and their argument to Junie, who understands her predicament. Junie suggests that Elsy should tell Pru what she is feeling, even if she’s embarrassed about what her life has become since she met Liam. They arrive at the Daffodil Inn that Junie and Will began to restore at the end of Daffodil Daydreams, and it feels like home to Elsy. Seeing how much Junie is in love with the inn and her life, Elsy feels a pang of longing for something similar.

Just before she goes to bed, Elsy looks out her window to see Anders walking toward the back of the inn. She tries to remember what lies beyond the inn in Rachel’s novels, but she doesn’t think it was ever mentioned, so she decides to explore the following day. Later that night, Elsy hears ghoulish sounds coming from downstairs and assumes that it’s the haunted toilet Will and Junie told her about. She goes downstairs to investigate but is too scared once she reaches the basement and retreats to her room.

Elsy hardly gets sleep that night with the noises coming from the basement toilet, as she tells Junie the following morning. When she goes to investigate what’s behind the inn, Elsy sees Lily Shah, the little girl Anders had been talking to in the bookstore. Lily is carrying her favorite book, which is still falling apart, and Elsy tells her that she can help repair it. Lily tells her that they can get supplies from the craft section of the bookstore, but Elsy insists that they must be sneaky about it because she does not want to run into Anders.

Elsy and Lily don’t spot Anders at the bookstore at first, but he shortly appears behind them and asks what they are doing. He and Elsy agree to a temporary truce to help Lily, and Anders gets the supplies they need to fix her book. While repairing the book, Lily asks Elsy about the books she likes and if she likes romance novels, like Anders. Lily insists that Elsy should talk to Anders about it and tells her that Anders isn’t married, but he almost was once. Elsy tries to imagine what Anders would be like romantically and why he presumably broke up with his fiancée but stops herself when she realizes that they are likely more alike than she thought. When Elsy finishes repairing the book, Lily is ecstatic. Elsy knows that she still has to apologize to Anders for slapping him, but she retreats from the bookstore once Lily leaves.

Elsy has lunch at the cafe in hopes of running into Ruby, knowing she must apologize to her as well. Elsy does apologize, and though Ruby still thinks that it was rude of Elsy to assume things about her, she admits that it did get her thinking about her life. Right after Ruby leaves, Elsy runs into Maya Shah, who mentions that Ruby’s estranged brother, Garnet, is coming back to town. Garnet is the love interest in the fourth Quixotic Falls novel, Return to Sender. He and the protagonist, Beatrice Everly, end the novel as the only characters who leave Eloraton, and Elsy knows that Rachel thought Bea was the character who was most like her.

Maya mentions how unlucky Elsy is to be stuck in Eloraton, something that surprises Elsy since she never knew Maya to hate the town. Maya acts unlike her character, telling Elsy that she feels like a secondary character in her own story. She starts to reveal how there was only one person in Eloraton who understood before Maya spots Lyssa Green, the owner of the flower shop and another secondary character in the novels. Elsy knows that, throughout the first four Quixotic Falls novels, Maya and Lyssa pine over one another, but here they act awkwardly, as if something has happened between them. Elsy begins to wonder if the characters of Eloraton are frozen in the time after the fourth novel when Rachel stopped writing, and she wonders what else has changed.

Elsy finally returns to the inn and heads to a pergola behind it. She follows the alleyway beyond to a gated courtyard, which she doesn’t remember at all from the books. As she goes inside, she feels electricity in the air, like something in her surroundings has changed. In the courtyard is a fountain that somehow miraculously works, and everything else is covered in overgrown grass and clovers. As she looks closer, Elsy sees that the courtyard is filled with statues and tombstones, all of which bear the names of documents saved on a computer.

Elsy goes to uncover the closest statue and is shocked when it looks almost exactly like Anders. She continues to tear the overgrowth off old statues, and all of them look almost exactly like Anders but with one or two different features. Elsy realizes that this place must be “a graveyard of deleted scenes” (130), but she still doesn’t know how Anders fits into it. Suddenly, Elsy realizes that Anders must be the main character in Rachel’s last book, but because it was never written, he is stuck somewhere in limbo between stories. Elsy thinks that Anders must be so protective of Eloraton because it is part of his story and that she is getting in the way of it. However, this also leads Elsy to wonder where the heroine of his love story is.

Elsy goes to the bookstore but doesn’t see Anders, or Mr. Butterscotch, the cat that always follows him around. She hears a thump coming from upstairs, and when she heads toward it, she sees that Anders is stuck outside the window on the roof with Mr. Butterscotch. Though Anders is happy that someone is there to help him, he’s not happy it’s Elsy. When she gets Anders and Mr. Butterscotch inside again, Elsy is surprised that Anders apologizes for being so cruel to her earlier. He offers her his guest room again, knowing about the supposedly haunted toilet, and Elsy finally apologizes for slapping him. Anders doesn’t accept the apology, thinking he deserves to be slapped, and he invites her to have dinner with him. Elsy agrees, hoping to find out more about Anders’s story and see if she can finally find an ending to Quixotic Falls.

While the two of them make dinner together, Elsy tries to figure out how Anders ended up in Eloraton, still thinking that he seems familiar. Anders starts to bring up his fiancée but stops himself. Though they make an inedible pasta, the two bond over their shared love of books and romance. Elsy finds herself becoming endeared to Anders but has to remember that he is fictional and must have a heroine who he is destined to be with.

Having ruined their pasta, the two go out to get pizza and discover that it is not raining when it always rains in town. Everyone in town has noticed and is outside, and Gail opens the patio at the bar for everyone. Junie, Will, Maya, and Thomas, a protagonist from the third book in the series, all show up, and Elsy sees how this could be part of her life if it wasn’t fictional. Ruby arrives without Jake, who never shows up, to everyone’s surprise. Everyone leaves a little drunk, especially Elsy, who feels more drawn to Anders than ever as he walks her back to the bookstore. She continues to think about how Anders and Eloraton can’t be part of her life since she is leaving tomorrow, but she doesn’t hesitate when Anders tells her that he is going to kiss her. A clap of thunder scares them apart, and they both come to their senses. Anders sees Elsy up to her room, where she invites him in, mentioning how she will be gone tomorrow. Anders declines her invitation and leaves.

Elsy wakes the next morning to noisy starlings and a major hangover, along with the embarrassment of being rejected by Anders the night before. When she goes downstairs to the bookstore, she sees a man whom she can only assume is Frank, the auto mechanic, and she runs away from Anders before they can discuss what happened last night.

Frank informs Elsy that a piece of her car has stopped working and that it will be hard for him to find another because Sweetpea is so old. Frank still thinks that he can get her car fixed by Wednesday, leaving Elsy in Eloraton for at least another two days. When Elsy starts to unload her car, she sees that one of the covers of the Quixotic Falls books is blurry, like half of the menu at the cafe. On the way back to the bookstore, Elsy stumbles upon Ruby and Jake having a private conversation in which Ruby tells Jake that she needs a break from their relationship.

An unusually early storm rolls in as Elsy panics about what Ruby told Jake. When she gets to the bookstore, Elsy knows that she can’t tell Anders about what she overheard, as he had been adamant about her not causing ripples while she was in Eloraton. She is surprised when Anders isn’t mad to learn that she needs to stay a few more days, and he says that she can have the loft as long as she needs and loans her some spare clothes. Anders gives Elsy a shirt embroidered with the initials “A. S.,” a pairing Elsy knows she has seen before but can’t remember from where.