Book 2 in the Ghosted series
Reviewed by CJ | Rating: 5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
📖
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Grim Tidings yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
OPENING HOOK
I read this in one day and I am still thinking about that lighthouse scene. B. K. Borison went and did it again (not that I expected anything less), with the same haunting, atmospheric magic as Good Spirits, minus the Christmas threads. Here we have a Reaper who is tired of her job and a guardian angel who isn’t sure what he’s doing anymore. It’s a strange combination that works in every way.
THE FULL STORY — SPOILERS INCLUDED
Darcy is a Reaper. She died in 1918 at 27, went straight from her deathbed to the filing room with pretty much zero transition, and has been reaping souls ever since. And she is done. Not in a dramatic, screaming quit on your way out the door kind of done, just the bone-tired, weary and unhappy kind of done. She’s sick of taking away loved ones, sick of being surrounded by death, and when we meet her she doesn’t seem to know what she wants anymore, which is a weird place to be when your job doesn’t really allow for feelings.
Her next assignment pulls her to the same little coastal town from Good Spirits (love the nods to Nolan and the Crow’s Nest), and she barely has any details on the soul she’s looking for, just flashes, snippets, a feeling she’s meant to follow. That feeling walks her into a dive bar, straight to a bartender named Gabriel, and the two of them fall into flirty banter so fast it’s apparent to Gabe’s regulars that there’s something different about her. The evening builds to a proper back-alley makeout session, but that’s when he senses her magic and loses it, because Gabriel’s a guardian angel, and guardians and reapers hate each other on principle. One department’s trying to keep people alive, the other’s there to collect them when it’s over, and neither side seems to actually understand what the other does. It’s such a great take on something we’ve all given thought to at once point in our lives. Here we have two factions convinced the other exists to ruin everything, when really they’re just two halves of the same system and should be working together. I love the idea that office politics are a fundamental problem in all planes of existence, lol.
So, he runs her off. She’s crushed because she’s being feared and hated yet again for being who she is, and she decides that this time she will not do her job. She strikes a deal with Gabriel: she’s got a list of things she never got to do while she was alive, and if he helps her tick a few off, she’ll give him details from the visions of who she’s there to take. He is desperate to save whoever it is, so he agrees. He starts helping her, a little maliciously at first (taking her to jump into a gross river because one of her list items is “jump into a lake” although he doesn’t expect her to actually do it). But she’s so starved for feeling something, anything, that she does it anyway, and that’s where the two of them start opening up to each other. There’s this pull neither of them can explain, though as the reader you know; of course they’re soulmates. It’s easy to see after Nolan and Hillary’s book, and it’s still gorgeous to watch it unfold. Both of them are carrying so much. She’s not fulfilled and doesn’t want to be death anymore. He’s got two slash marks on his chest representing two people he failed to protect, and he’s carrying that like it’s the whole of who he is despite helping thousands.
Frank is where we start to see a bigger picture. He’s an older widower who owns a flower shop (because his late wife loved flowers and it keeps him close to her), and he and Gabriel have this sweet, mismatched friendship. Frank keeps saying Darcy feels familiar to him, but when we find out why it’s heartbreaking, because she’s the Reaper who took his wife and young daughter in a car accident forty years earlier.
Darcy eventually figures out that her target is Nate, Gabriel’s carefree best friend, and it breaks her heart a little, so she doesn’t tell Gabriel. Their truce-budding-ill-fated relationship thing is still too new, and she’s scared he won’t let her help once he knows. She keeps dropping those hints from their deal instead while they fall properly in love, because of course they do. They’re both fundamentally good, and both have spent their whole existences trying to do right by the rules.
This brings us to Gideon, their boss, head of the whole Department of Hauntings and Spirits. He turns up after having been “out of the office” for centuries, which was expected after she went rogue, but still a little terrifying. The soul is owed, and Darcy can’t put this off any long. Her little Reaper friend Aelia (died around eight or nine, wears the most fun outfits, fully embraces the job and is a fantastic friend) has been running interference for her this whole time, buying her time, but it’s run out and the show down begins.
It’s Halloween night in the cemetery, and all of our major players show up. Nate has no idea what’s going on, Frank has recognized Darcy for what she is, and Gabriel is ready to take on the ancient Gideon if that’s what it takes to stand at Darcy’s side. But Frank, tired, and wanting to be with his wife and daughter again, difuses everything by offering to take Nate’s place. It’s unexpected, and death rarely makes exceptions or deals, but Gideon is also good at heart so he agrees. Gabriel has been watching all of this knowing he’s about to lose Darcy and nowknows he’ll lose Frank in that same breath; he’s two thousand years old and feeling like a complete failure.
The night ends, and eventually Rafe, the guardian sent to hand down Gabriel’s punishment for his two “failures” shows up. A long talk with his old friend (can we call him a friend?) helps Gabe realize that those failures were never how the department judged him, they were how he judged himself. He was an exemplary Guardian; the best of the best. The scars were self-inflicted guilt, not a verdict passed down. That fresh perspective helps him see his life differently, and how it led him here to his soul mate.
Darcy ends up serving her punishment in customer service (brutal, as we all know), fully believing that this is how it ends. She understandably assumed that going rogue meant getting fired, and being sent back to reaping had never crossed her mind, so when Gideon tells her she’s got one more soul to collect, her heart breaks a little harder. Except the twist here is that the soul is Gabriel’s, albeit decades down the line, and her “punishment” is that she gets to live out her Reaper existence with him as her last assignment until they go to the afterlife together, instead of each of them going alone like they would have if they’d never found each other. Every bit of what Gabriel went through was leading him to her, and her time served was leading her to him. It’s such a good book.
BEST PART OF THIS BOOK
The boat trip to the lighthouse. Darcy jokes offhandedly that he’s taking her out there to dump her body, but it’s the moment they both stop fighting the pull between them and just accept that they want to spend whatever time they have together. It’s quiet and it’s beautiful and it’s the heart of the whole book for me (alongside Tater Tot the undead dog, obviously. He is absolutely the goodest dog and I would have also read his book if there was one).
WORST PART OF THIS BOOK
Nothing. There was nothing wrong with this book and you can’t convince me otherwise.
THE TWIST WE DIDN’T SEE COMING
Frank being the connection all along. That Darcy was the Reaper who took his wife and daughter forty years earlier, and that he’d recognize her was a kick to the chest. I knew it when he said she looked familiar, but it didn’t soften the blow. And then him offering to take Nate’s place at the end so he could be with them again just about did me in. B. K. Borison, you made me feel all the feels in this one.
THE MOMENT THAT STOOD OUT
They get back from the boat, soaked from the rain, and Darcy heads upstairs while Gabriel goes to talk to Nate. That’s when all her hints click into place for him (the wet pavement, cracked glasses) and he realizes that Nate is who she’s there for. He turns just as a car comes barreling down the road, and before he can call out, Darcy throws herself in front of it to save Nate. She made her choice and followed through. Can you imagine what it takes to follow your heart and go against an ancient system like death?
THE STEAM RATING BREAKDOWN
🔥🔥🔥— There’s spice here. A handful of scenes, explicit and open door but sweet as can be (okay, and a little dirty in the best possible way).
The romance is completely central to the plot; this isn’t a book you could pull the romance out of and still have a story.
THE ENDING — SATISFIED OR DISAPPOINTED?
Satisfied. Seeing Darcy and Gabriel being given the chance to build a life and an afterlife together made it worth every ache along the way.
WOULD WE REREAD IT?
Absolutely, yes. I finished it in one day and I’m already planning to buy the audio. If it’s half as good as the audio for Good Spirits was, it’ll be a replay every fall going forward.
WHO IS THIS FOR
Anybody who wants an excellent love story with real emotional depth. BK Borison writes atmosphere like nobody else and this gives you all the same feeling as Good Spirits, just without the Christmas backdrop. If you want a book you can’t put down, this is it.
WHERE TO GET THIS BOOK
📖 Physical Book
Amazon CA | Amazon US | Bookshop.org
🎧 Audiobook
Audible CA | Audible US
🎁 New to Audible? Get 3 months free (US)
🎁 New to Libro.fm? Get 2 free audiobooks
📚 More from the Ghosted Series
Book 1 — Good Spirits | Reviewed by CJ | ⭐ 5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 — [Read the Review]
Book 2 — Grim Tidings | Reviewed by CJ | ⭐ 5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 — You’re reading it!
Ready for more reviews from CJ? Find More Here
Plot Twisted. 🔥
📖 | Series: Ghosted Book 2 | Genre: Paranormal Romance | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
TAGS: Paranormal Romance, Ghosted Series, BK Borison, Slow Burn, Fated Mates, Grim Reaper Romance, Guardian Angel Romance, Small Town Romance, Book 2, Series Romance