“A Love This Grim” by Elora Morgan

A Love This Grim

Elora Morgan
Bound & Crowned Press (2025)
ISBN: 979-8988279488
Reviewed by Gabrielle R. Lamontagne for Reader Views (08/2026)

Elora Morgan wends a tale of true love with powerfully poetic prose and playful, yet intense character depth. She builds a world that mixes a love for history and a variety of mythologies with her own sense of wonder and wisdom about the ways of the universe, which is both thrilling to experience and thought-provoking. The novel also features delightfully dark and elegant illustrations throughout.

A Love This Grim features a young woman raised in the human world by supernatural beings, learning what it means to make her way as an adult with one foot in her mortal reality and one foot in the world where time and space run together. Discovering how best to balance the two worlds, or deciding which one she would rather inhabit fully, is the main theme of this novel, though each of the well-rounded and fun supporting characters has a story to share and more to grow from. What does it mean to love for eternity, and how do you recover trust when it has been broken?

The structure of the entire book is excellent. It begins with an incredibly well-chosen and lovely epigraph. Readers will also appreciate the thorough and well-worded trigger warning included in the front matter. The text could use another light pass of proofreading, but the errors are not truly distracting from the story. The prologue and first chapter both end with hooks that successfully intrigue.

The prose is enticing and fitting for the genre (contemporary paranormal romance or dark romance). Morgan employs tools such as suspense and mystery to keep the reader guessing about the next plot twist from the start all the way through the end. She also creates deliciously slow-burning tension for her main pair of lovers, built wave by crashing wave and twinkling hint by sizzling nudge. One example includes the gorgeous and fitting line, “…murder had never been more melodious…”. The banter between the main pair of characters, who end up as lovers, is fittingly teasing for the reader, as well as the characters. Grief, as well as hope, plays a large part in each of these stories – and the author is able to move the reader to tears with her relatable writing.

Morgan’s novel includes a surprising number of plot twists – but they each have a purpose in the end. Overall, the way she plays with classic tales and myths and forms them to her own design of the supernatural world is fascinating and fulfilling. By the end, all of the loose ends are satisfactorily tied. For fans of philosophy, mythology (or comparative religions), and true love, A  Love This Grim by Elora Morgan is highly recommended.