Mrs. Nash's Ashes by Sarah Adler
A Novel
Title: Mrs. Nash’s Ashes
Author: Sarah Adler
Publisher: Berkley Romance
Publication Year: 2023
ISBN: 9780593547793
Rating: 4.5 stars
Despite being born nearly seventy years apart, Mrs. Rose Nash and Millicent Watts-Cohen were best friends up until the day of Mrs. Nash’s death. They met when Millie and her ex-boyfriend moved into the apartment next door to Mrs. Nash’s and became fast friends. When Millie learned that her ex was only using her and her child-star fame to promote his writing career, Millie ended up moving in with Mrs. Nash. Being roommates worked out for everyone: Millie had a place to live, Mrs. Nash had some company, and Mrs. Nash’s family felt reassured there was someone there to help her with her day to day needs.
While they were roommates, Mrs. Nash told Millie about the love of her life. It wasn’t Mr. Nash, but instead a woman named Elsie that she met in Key West while she was a Navy Pigeoneer and Elsie was a nurse in World War II. Mrs. Nash thought that Elsie had later died serving in the Korean War. In doing some research after Mrs. Nash’s death, Millie discovered that Elsie was still alive and in a nursing home in Key West. However, when Millie calls Elsie’s nursing home, she discovers that Elsie is in hospice care and doesn’t have much time left. Millie realizes that she has to take desperate measures.
So on a busy Memorial Day weekend, Millie packs a bag with some clothes, three tablespoons of Mrs. Nash’s ashes (that’s all the Nash family would allow her) and Elsie’s old letters and sets off to fly from DC to Miami then rent a car and drive the rest of the way to Key West to reunite the lovers before Elsie is gone. But of course, nothing goes according to plan.
After being stopped by a fan of Penelope of the Past, Millie’s old TV show, that wanted to reminisce with her about how a certain scene of her in a yellow bikini made him feel, Millie is rescued by Hollis Hollenbeck, a guy from her ex’s MFA program that she has met before. Her relief at being saved is short lived when the airport announces that a computer glitch has grounded all flights for the time being. She heads to the car rental counter hoping she can drive and still get to Key West in time, but finds that all the cars are taken. Desperate to get to Elsie, she agrees to ride with a stranger to North Carolina and hopes that she can rent a car from there. Luckily, Hollis, who owns a car and happens to be headed to Miami, again steps up to save the day.
Grumpy and taciturn Hollis and bubbly and ever-trusting Millie set out as one of the most mis-matched road trip duos in history. Like any great road trip novel, there are bumps and delays along the way. While trying to make it through the trip in one piece and get to Elsie before she passes, Millie tells Hollis Mrs. Nash and Elsie’s love story and he gets invested in Millie’s goal. Additionally, with sparks flying between them, they are starting to get invested in each other, however they both have been hurt in the past and Hollis prefers casual sex while Millie prefers relationships. Neither of them knows if they can be what each other needs and if they can get to Elsie in time.
Ultimately, I liked this book. Yes, it is very predictable and Millie and Hollis are both well worn archetypes. And if a road trip is involved, there is almost always going to be a series of unfortunate events that delays the trip. And yes, if you have an unexpected hotel stay there will always be only one room left and that room will always only have one bed and no other furniture. But, this book is also unique. While Millie and Hollis fulfill the classic grumpy sunshine trope, in my experience the grumpy usually ends up physically or verbally protecting the sunshine one in some way. That isn’t how it goes here. Hollis sees Millie’s quirks and emotional needs and helps accommodate them in a world that usually doesn’t. And I guess that is a form of protection, but it was nice to see him doing the work to notice these things and being solicitous about them instead of just beating people up because she’s too nice to. I also think the child-stardom that Millie is trying to control or escape differs from the usual status quo. I also loved the Rose and Elsie storyline interspersed throughout the story.
That said, I would have liked to see more of Rose and Elsie’s story. I know that Millie is only recounting the little bit that Rose had time to tell her, but I think the historical setting, the illicitness of the relationship at the time, and the pigeoneering make that story much more compelling than the road trip story. Adler is a history aficionado, so I would have loved to see more about that historical milieu. However, Adler is married to a man (I don’t know much about her identity beyond that), so if she were to have dived more into that relationship it might have returned to that question I’ve been pondering all month about who is best equipped to tell certain kinds of stories. I expected Rose and Elsie’s story to be more in the forefront, so I read this book to be on the theme of Pride Month, but in the end, this really just boiled down to a cishet romance with a lesbian subplot.
This book was very spicy. There are several sex scenes and they are pretty graphic. But, like with the main plot of the story, they focus on the heterosexual aspect. There are intimate scenes between Rose and Elsie, but those mostly imply sex rather than the more explicit scenes between Millie and Hollis. That does make sense though. Mrs. Nash is telling Millie their story while the reader is experiencing Millie and Hollis’s story as it unfolds. It isn’t equal representation, but I might have been more disturbed if Mrs. Nash had told Millie about her sex life in the same explicit detail that the reader sees themselves. That said, if you are not into spicy romance, you might want to pass this book up.
I also felt like the ending of the book got a little heavy. It is not until they get to Key West that Millie really processes all the things she’s been dealing with for the past six months—the break up of a long-term relationship and realizing how toxic it had been, moving twice, losing her best friend, and the stress of trying to get to Key West in time. Naturally, that is when things between Hollis and Millie come to a head as well. There is a lot of thought about love and life and what kind of legacy a person leaves behind and whether true and enduring love really lasts. And while Mrs. Nash and Elsie both were content with their lives, it’s heavy to think about them working to be content all the while yearning for one another and not having any contact due to miscommunications. Ultimately, I think the ending is happy, but I cried through the last several chapters (some happy tears, but many sad). That really isn’t what I expect from a rom-com and I was kind of caught off guard because despite dealing with death from the very first line, this book had been mostly upbeat and funny until close to the end.
This is Adler’s first novel and I think it was a good debut. I will be interested in what she writes in the future, but I’d really love to see her do some historical fiction next time around because that is what I found to be the real gem in this book.