A charming and unusual premise! Nora sells caskets for a living and Garrett is a middleman for Death. Opposites attract but can they withstand questionable career choices?!

This was a cute, light, and uneven read. Nora and Garrett fall for each other instantly so I’m not sure there was much relationship growth and development and the pacing felt a bit off. There were a lot of religious references and churchgoing which I was not expecting (and am not personally a fan of). Though the book deals with death and grief, it doesn’t delve too deeply and remains lighthearted.

Thank you to Random House Ballantine and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a copy.

Okay five stars for the ~~VIIIIBES~~ alone.

Is this a perfect book? No. And I'll get into that but first...thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of Casket Case, and shout out Lauren Evans for a delightful debut novel.

Let's get into the good. This could easily be a bummer of a book or it could easily be really hokey...but it's neither? Nora owns a casket business, Garrett works for Death. FUN FUN FUN. I expected a bit more comedy, a bit more of exasperated ghosts watching this couple and shaking their heads. But that's not what you get. What you get is...Nora works in caskets, and Garrett works for Death which is basically a logistics company. It's really not anything deeper than that.

This is also written in present tense third person omniscient which is so fun to read (to me) and I enjoyed reading this story with this perspective. More books should use this POV, though it's hard. And I know because I'm trying to write something in it, and it's HARD. Sometimes things sound weird and don't flow as well as they would if you were using a first person POV. Which is one of my minor gripes with this story. Sometimes things don't feel like they flow from one thing to the next. It feels a bit stunted in certain areas. Not in big plot ways, but in one sentence to the next. Sometimes it's the dialogue, sometimes it's the switch between scenes. It feels like it just needs a little more finessing in a handful of areas.

Nora is a bit of a disaster at the start and as much as I really like her and how she feels her feelings, I do think she was a little dramatic at the beginning for the sake of plot and it felt unnecessary. It's also insta-love. And that's usually wildly annoying to me, but it was kind of fun in this story. There wasn't pining. There wasn't some enemies to lovers or second chance or anything like that. Garrett shows up one day and is like, hey I like you. And boom. That's it.

For some reason there are pieces of this story that I normally don't like but they all just WORK when it's put in this context. I do think this book will end up with something like an overall 3.6 rating on Goodreads as the book stands right now, and that feels like a bummer. I think if this went through another editor (not that this one did anything wrong, just for a new set of eyes) and really tightened it up a bit more, it would really soar. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would happily read anything else Laruen Evans publishes.

Five stars for a contemporary romance that revolves around death and funerals but not in a trauma way.

In the beginning i found it very hard to immerse myself into the story. Nora wasn’t the most enjoyable character at first but who is after her parents are dead? Let’s be real. She’s kinda just going through the motions clinging to what she has left of them: a casket shop. Now the first date? I was getting butterflies from Garrett. You have to love a direct man. The small town banter and gossip is exactly what you’d expect and provides some comic relief with some charm. Once you get over the little beginning hump it’s actually good. I recommend sticking it through to the end it really is cute.