Good Spirits by B.K. Borison

It’s that time of year again and with it comes the reappearance of old classics. Maybe you watch It’s a Wonderful Life on repeat or lean more towards the perfect unbridled chaos of Fred Claus. Me personally? I’m watching (and singing) White Christmas until the clock strikes midnight on December 26th.

Some people though, they’re watching or reading Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. A classic story where a curmudgeon of a man, Ebenezer Scrooge, gets visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve – the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. They each show him the error of his ways and eventually it leads to him transforming into a better person.

Now, this is not a review on A Christmas Carol (I know an over saturated market when I see one). However, you need the context to understand just what makes Good Spirits by B.K. Borison so special.

The story focuses on the Ghost of Christmas Past, Nolan Callahan, and his assignment this December – antiques shop owner, Harriet York. Poor Nolan died in 1905 and instead of finding a peaceful afterlife, like God intended, my man died just to be assigned more work. Turns out, ghosts have jobs too. (Yeah, you heard that right. Talk about literal worst case scenario. That has to be my own personal hellscape.)

Nolan’s, at least, is only for one month a year. Every year, since his untimely demise he’s been tasked with taking on a holiday haunting with some of the worst humanity has to offer. Normally, truly awful people who deserve the wake up call. A call Nolan gets to give year after year and by the time he’s done he gets to hand them off by his Christmas Eve deadline to the next ghost for the rest of their holiday haunting/reckoning.

Things are different this year though. Almost immediately, Nolan’s pretty sure he’s been wrongly assigned. Harriet York is nothing like his prior assignments. She carries around candy canes in every pocket and has Hermione Granger level sentient hair. She insists that he’s a dream or a hallucination caused by expired peppermint tea when he appears in her living room behind her Christmas tree, despite his many efforts to convince her otherwise. Eventually, he finds himself giving into her condition of reappearing the next day so she knows she’s not in the midst of some psychosis episode.

“On the first day of December, the universe gave to me – A string of bad luck and a … ghost, apparently.”

Seriously, Harriet is sunshine personified and my man, Nolan, is struggling both professionally and ethically at all times. I love that for him, but you know the afterlife can be trying on anyone apparently. He’s never had to remind himself not to like his hauntee before.

It would be remiss of me not to mention that not only is Nolan a ghost, he’s a hot Irish sailor ghost with a mustache, an accent, and a love of flannel. Honestly, I’d be willing to accept the possibility of a mental break if it meant that was how it manifested. But, I digress.

As a protagonist, Harriet is so devastatingly relatable. A people pleaser to her core who will willingly give up pieces of herself if it means avoiding confrontation and living up to the expectations of others. So, of course, the only one she doesn’t put a mask on for is a man claiming to be a ghost assigned to haunt her for the holiday season because allegedly she’s a bad person?? Yeah, okay. Sure.

Borison manages to give us a fresh take on the Christmas Carol mythology, all while mixing in some of my all time favorite literary tropes. Opposites attract? Check. Christmas Magic? Check. “It was always you?” Check. Holiday romance? Touch Starved Immortal? Fated mates? Check. Check. Check.

“You’re the first thing in a hundred years to make me feel anything at all, Harriet York, and I don’t think that’s an accident.”

Nolan’s and Harriet’s feelings are so tangible you ache for them. Harriet has spent her whole life trying to make her family happy, praying that eventually they’d manage to love her if she folded and squished and bent herself into a box of their choosing. It’s her choice to be true to herself, to put her happiness first, that she views as her most despicable crime.

Meanwhile, Nolan’s century-long isolation outside of work (barring his cat) has left him feeling hopeless and cynical in a world that has never been kind to him. He died so young and now he’s meant to work in this job until he manages to accomplish some unknown goal to hopefully move on to whatever version of heaven is out there? It’s not fair and he is floundering – miserable and faithless. Until this December. Until Harriet.

“You make me hope, Harriet. You make me want. I am haunted by you.”

What follows is the kind of bone deep, soul filling, world shattering love story we all yearn for. Pure Holiday Magic. The whimsy. The unparalleled joy. There’s nothing quite like it. It filled me up and rebuilt me into someone who believes. Believes in the inevitability of dreams coming true and wishes being granted. Believes in happily ever after regardless of how impossible it may seem.

“So, thank you for picking up this book. I hope it brought you something you needed. I hope that if you feel like a lost and forgotten thing, that you realize how beautiful and special you truly are. And I hope that if you feel like you’ve been left waiting, that there’s beauty in that, too. That maybe, the thing you’ve been searching for is right around the corner.”

God B.K., we can only hope. As we approach the first day of December, I hope you find the thing you’ve been searching for. I would be lying, though, if I said I didn’t hope that something was this book.