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Hello friends!!!

Welcome to another review! I’m excited to talk about this book. I bought it from Once Upon a Book Club as part of their Halloween Box. If you read my review of this book subscription, I really enjoyed the experience of this book box, but I found that the monthly book options were not typically ones that I wanted to read. My genre variety just isn’t wide enough to properly enjoy that subscription; however, their one-off boxes where you know what you’ll be getting for a book are absolutely up my alley. That’s where this box comes in!

Anyways, let’s actually get into the review!

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“Given that we’d reached mid-October—and, more importantly, Halloween season—I shouldn’t have been surprised to find a man dressed up as the Grim Reaper on the balcony of Anatole Manor.”

Kelly Creagh, A Date with Death, First Line

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Welcome to a fantastic romance with the Grim Reaper. What more do you really need to know to pick up this book? Ok, fine, I’ll tell you some more. I guess this review can’t just be one word. In this book, we have the Grim Reaper who is just out doing his job, collecting the souls of the dead. He’s around to collect the soul of this children’s librarian, but for some reason, he saves her instead. And thus, our story begins.

I’m not a huge fan of pretty much any romance in the real world. Contemporary romance just doesn’t usually do much for me, and a lot of supernatural romance doesn’t quite hit right. That being said, I don’t completely avoid the genre; I just have a dose of skepticism. In this particular novel, while we spend a lot of time in the real world, we also get a dose of a sort of limbo-type area where our supernatural love interest stays while he’s not taking care of dead souls. I would have loved to learn more about that space, as it seems almost like a house that exists in the middle of this dense forest that can only be accessed by certain means.

We have a very sunshine x grump situation between our children’s librarian Helena and our Grim Reaper (lovingly referred to as Grim). I really enjoyed the interactions between these two characters. They definitely had that classic sunshine x grump vibe, but I wasn’t mad at it. Helena is bubbly and happy, although a bit anxious (I mean, she does almost keep dying). Grim is very serious and cannot seem to fathom why he can’t do his job properly when it comes to Helena. It’s cute.

The overall plot is a fairly solid story with Grim trying to hide that he messed up, while it seems like someone is out to get him and make him lose his job. Grim is slowly falling in love with Helena, and Helena is kind of dealing with her own stuff, like how do you face your inevitable death? We do also get a wonderful cast of side characters, including a Scottish fairy who reaps the souls of the young and a volunteer at the library living his best emo/apathetic life.

As far as the ending of the book goes, there was a concern there with how it might end for a while. Without providing too many spoilers, I didn’t get the ending that I hoped for; however, the ending that we did get, I did enjoy. We also get a nice epilogue that helps to wrap everything up pretty neatly. I would like to have more stories with our friends who live in the house in the woods and I hope that maybe someday we can come back to them.

I am very much a big vibes reader, and this book definitely brought me some good vibes. I was loving our couple here. I giggled at the banter, and the first time they hooked up, I screamed. Pretty sure my fiancé thought I was insane (pretty sure he still does haha). I genuinely enjoyed this. It was an easy read and it made me happy and honestly, sometimes that all you need.

4.5 ★

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And we’ve made it to the end once again! I hope you enjoyed this review. If you have anything you’d like to see in the future or any comments, feel free to reach out to me! I accept any feedback, as long as it’s actually feedback and not just mean.

I’ll be back next week with another one!!

Bye friends!!!