Brimming with ancient lore and passionate characters.
Growing up is an adventure for everyone, no matter their starting point. For Avalia, the adopted daughter of literal Death, her childhood came with a front‑row seat to the afterlife, which had a way of rearranging what normal looked like. Her birth parents died when she was young, yet that memory feels less like a tragedy and more like the extraordinary beginning of her life. “A life of death was the only one familiar to me.” Rather than going to parties or making friends, Ava traverses the globe on a fantastical beast not bound by the laws of the mortal realm to pursue whatever interests catch her eye. Rounding the corner of her twenty-first birthday, she isn’t sure which direction her adult life should take. Her passions include dancing and reaping, though with her head in the realm of immortals but her feet planted on mortal ground, following in her father’s footsteps is impossible, leaving her to decide what kind of life she can claim for herself. As she gets to know her father’s powerful Four Horsemen, she begins to understand what she really wants: closeness. Raised by a pair of surrogate spectral parents and a father whose proximity could cost her life, Ava has seen enough to know that happily ever afters for mortals exist only in fairy tales. Close relationships have always eluded her, yet the horsemen have opened her eyes to friendship, affection, and desire. She draws closer to the horsemen and falls completely for Noric, Death’s most skilled reaper. But the world is changing. Malaise is taking hold, and whether Ava becomes a cure or a catalyst remains uncertain.
Brimming with ancient lore and passionate characters, A Love this Grim isn’t just a story of forbidden love. Ava and Noric’s relationship grows against all odds, though it is cosmically disallowed. Their unconventional romance is built on more than small miscommunications, petty jealousies, or the undeniable pull between a graceful ballerina and her preternaturally handsome reaper. Tension escalates as the plot encompasses ancient beings, unbendable rules, and the fate of innocent humans. Though the twists and turns threaten to break your heart, the novel always reminds readers what is worth fighting for. A clever and bright look at human mortality, the book’s romanticized but surreal vision of death and architecture of the afterlife turns something terrifying into something intimate, necessary, and even desirable under the right circumstances. The author makes the unknowable feel warm and familiar through lyrical, immersive prose. Nowhere is this more evident than in a gorgeous scene where Ava dances to Noric’s original musical composition. Beauty, danger, and sensuality are woven into this and other memorable passages, letting readers fall in love in step with the main characters. Romantasy written with a literary hand, A Love this Grim features thoughtful worldbuilding, enduring lore, strong chemistry, and a self-aware protagonist readers will come to view as family.
