Grim Tidings Book Review: That Ending Wrecked Me

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Good Spirits was my first B.K. Borison book, and I honestly didn’t expect to love it as much as I did. So when Avon sent me an eARC of Grim Tidings, I was ridiculously excited. But in the back of my mind, I wondered: could I possibly love Grim Tidings just as much or more than I loved Good Spirits?

Enter Darcy Moore, a Grim Reaper who is so tired of her life being surrounded by death that she decides she’s simply not going to reap her next soul. Add Gabriel Aetos, a Guardian Angel with a proverbial stick up his ass who wants absolutely nothing to do with Darcy. They’re both deliciously grumpy, although Darcy leans a little more sunshine, and watching these two clash was everything I wanted it to be (dare I say it was more). But somewhere between the banter, the whimsical magic, and two people who were never supposed to fit into each other’s lives, Grim Tidings became so much more than a fun supernatural romance I wasn’t expecting.

So I would officially like to declare to anyone willing to hear my cries: I loved Grim Tidings just as much as Good Spirits, and maybe just maybe I loved it a little bit more.

Title: Grim Tidings (Ghosted, 2)

Author: B.K. Borison

Publisher: Avon

Format: eARC

Genre: Paranormal, Romance

Release Date: September 15, 2026

Pages: 384

Star Rating: 5 stars

Spice Rating: 1 chili pepper

Darcy and Gabriel Had Me From the Beginning

One of my favorite things about Grim Tidings is that Darcy and Gabriel are both kind of (extremely) grumpy. Gabriel just happens to have a much larger stick up his ass than Darcy does.

Don’t get me wrong, Darcy isn’t all sunshine and rainbows either, but she definitely leans more in that direction. She wants to experience things. She wants to understand people and life and all these little moments she has spent so much time standing outside of as a Grim Reaper. Gabriel, meanwhile, likes pretty much everyone EXCEPT her. He is rigid, skeptical, and completely convinced that Darcy is a problem he needs to deal with rather than a person he needs to try to understand.

Naturally, I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing them annoy the hell out of each other.

But what made their relationship work for me wasn’t just the enemies-to-lovers tension or their banter. B.K. Borison slowly reveals all of these little pieces of who Darcy and Gabriel are underneath their supernatural roles, and the more I learned about them, the more attached I became.

Gabriel has spent so much of his existence believing that being a Guardian is the only thing he has to offer the world. Darcy is almost his opposite. She is surrounded by endings, but desperately wants the chance to experience what it means to actually live.

And somehow, despite being completely star-crossed and knowing a relationship between a Guardian Angel and a Grim Reaper could never really work, they each give the other something they desperately need.

There is more to life than your purpose.

And there is more to death than the endings it brings.

That emotional core is what took Grim Tidings from a romance I was having a really good time reading to one I genuinely cared about.

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Whimsical, Cozy and Somehow Still About Death

I also love the strange little contradiction at the heart of these books. Grim Tidings is literally a book about death, Reapers, Guardians, and the Department of Hauntings & Spirits, yet somehow the world feels incredibly warm and utterly whimsical.

Aelia might be the perfect example. She’s running around in bright sweaters, sparkly tutus, and mermaid shoes, bringing this ridiculous burst of color into a story where death is an everyday part of life.

It shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it does.

After reading Good Spirits, I was also excited to see Borison open the door a little wider and give us more details about the larger supernatural world. We get a better sense of how Reapers and Guardians fit into it and how all of these rules surrounding life, death, and the afterlife actually work without the worldbuilding ever taking over the story.

That balance carries into the pacing too. Grim Tidings moves at a steady, quick beat, but never so quickly that I felt like I was missing the quieter moments that made me care about these characters. And boy did I care. There was always something pulling me forward without making the story feel rushed.

And Then B.K. Borison Hurt My Feelings

And this is apparently going to become a recurring problem between B.K. Borison and me.

Every time I read one of her books, I think there is no possible way she is going to make me love the next one more.

And then she does. And I do.

Grim Tidings was everything I imagined it would be: sweet, funny, heartfelt, and wonderfully whimsical. What I wasn’t prepared for was just how heartbreaking it could be at the same time.

Borison gives her characters room to unfold consistently throughout the story. We don’t learn everything about Darcy and Gabriel immediately. Instead, we get new pieces of their hopes, fears, and desires revealed as the story progresses, and every one anchors you to them a little more. By the time everything starts coming together, you’re not simply watching their story anymore. You’re emotionally invested in what happens to them.

So even if I had wanted to put this book down toward the end, I couldn’t have.

And then came the ending.

I will keep this spoiler-free, but when I say this book had me in tears, I mean it. The emotional payoff hit me much harder than I expected, particularly because Grim Tidings spends so much time feeling warm, funny, and comforting before reminding you exactly what kind of story it has been telling underneath all that whimsy.

My only gripe—and truthfully I’m not even sure I can call it that— is that I wanted more from the ending.

Not because it felt unfinished in any way. I simply wasn’t ready for it to be over.

I wanted more pages with these characters. A little more time in this world. Something. ANYTHING. Because after spending an entire book becoming utterly attached to Darcy and Gabriel, apparently B.K. expected me to simply close the book and say, ” Alright, what’s next?”

Absolutely not!

If Good Spirits made me fall in love with B.K. Borison’s writing, Grim Tidings confirmed that I’m completely invested in wherever she takes me next in this series. Not only did it give me the whimsical paranormal romance I came for, but underneath all of the magic, banter, and star-crossed romance was a surprisingly tender story about purpose, living, death, and what happens when someone makes you question the role you thought you were destined to play in it all.

So, yes, I would like to amend my earlier declaration.

I don’t think I love Grim Tidings quite as much as I love Good Spirits.

I think I loved it more.

Thank you to Avon Books and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of Grim Tidings to read and review. If you haven’t read my review of Good Spirits, what are you waiting for?

Don’t forget that you can shop your local indie bookstore via Bookshop.org and purchase a copy of Grim Tidings & Good Spirits.