Dana Schwartz
YA Gothic Historical
Edinburgh, 1817. Hazel Sinnett is a lady who wants to be a surgeon more than she wants to marry.
Jack Currer is a resurrection man who’s just trying to survive in a city where it’s too easy to die.
When the two of them have a chance encounter outside the Edinburgh Anatomist’s Society, Hazel thinks nothing of it at first. But after she gets kicked out of renowned surgeon Dr. Beecham’s lectures for being the wrong gender, she realizes that her new acquaintance might be more helpful than she first thought. Because Hazel has made a deal with Dr. Beecham: if she can pass the medical examination on her own, the university will allow her to enroll. Without official lessons, though, Hazel will need more than just her books – she’ll need bodies to study, corpses to dissect.
Lucky that she’s made the acquaintance of someone who digs them up for a living, then.
But Jack has his own problems: strange men have been seen skulking around cemeteries, his friends are disappearing off the streets. Hazel and Jack work together to uncover the secrets buried not just in unmarked graves, but in the very heart of Edinburgh society.
A gothic tale full of mystery and romance about a willful female surgeon, a resurrection man who sells bodies for a living, and the buried secrets they must uncover together.
-Excerpt taken from Goodreads.
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My Opinion
(3.5 / 5) Hazel is fascinated by the human body and how it works. This is quite unheard of in 1817 for a female. To fulfill her dream of becoming a surgeon, she needs bodies to study. This is where Jack comes in. His job is to dig up recently deceased people and sell them for study. Hazel and Jack strike up a friendship and become very close.
Hazel is engaged to her cousin (um ew) that comes from a powerful family. For her to remain friends or even admit feelings about Jack, but also to further her dreams she has to make some big decisions.
While I enjoyed this one, I found it to be too similar to books I’ve read previously. Stalking Jack the Ripper and A Rip Through Time. I typically enjoy books about autopsies, as I find it interesting. But all three of these books were from the time period where people were just starting to research the body and do autopsies. Usually, illegally. I’m not sure why that subject doesn’t interest me but somehow it doesn’t. It may be because it is done in a historical format instead of thriller.
I loved how the book ended. It was quite open-ended which I normally dislike, but this was done well. It made me curious for book 2.
AUDIO REVIEW: This was done with a full cast, what’s not to love? It was done well for each voice and I enjoyed listening.
General content summary: little to no language, people dig up graves and take the body but leave the clothes and items (multiple, body is used in medical experiments), a boys blood taken unwillingly and used for sinister purposes, a cut is stitched (blood), sibling death (previous, fever), details of Roman fever plague, a doctor cuts off a leg for a class to see, story of man beating his pregnant wife to death, some details of autopsies (few details, blood), m/f kiss (multiple), details of corpses, birth (some details), captivity, a teen’s arm is cut off unwillingly, a man steals an eye from an unconscious boy and replaces a man’s lack of eye, a man attempts to take a teen’s heart, alcohol (some underage, few), body hanged (no details).
Thank you to MacMillan Audio for the gifted copy through Audiobooks.Com!
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