Anatomy

 By: Dana Schwartz

Location: FIC SCH

Genre: Gothic, Romance, Historical Fiction

"Wow! Just wow! That’s so much than I expected: Alienist meets Frankenstein with Scottish romance vibes, hot love sessions and forbidden kisses at the graveyard! Yeap! Quirky, disturbing but also surprising, stimulating, intelligent! A great concoction for gothic thriller lovers who adore tough, bold, smart heroines!" Nelifer

If there is an award for cover art in 2022 this book has to win!!!

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.

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.

My favourite reviewer Nelifer reviews it this way on goodreads

Wow! Just wow! That’s so much than I expected: Alienist meets Frankenstein with Scottish romance vibes, hot love sessions and forbidden kisses at the graveyard! Yeap! Quirky, disturbing but also surprising, stimulating, intelligent! A great concoction for gothic thriller lovers who adore tough, bold, smart heroines!

Welcome to the 19th century of Scotland: where the plague erupted and womanhood was the biggest obstacle to choose medicine as profession.

Poor Hazel Sinnett lives in a secluded, gothic family mansion, electrifying frogs for testing her peculiar medical methods behind the locked doors as her mother still mourns after her dead brother George and her little brother Percy stays in the middle of this chaos, behaving like most irritating spoiler kid.

Hazel might be only 16 but she’s so determined to pursue her career in medicine in expanse of being disguised in her dead brother’s clothes, acting like a man to be accepted to the coursework.

The entire city of Edinburgh is getting through the most demanding and struggling times as the plague threat arises and the resurrection men who are the gravediggers for providing more dead bodies to the anatomists and surgeons to resume their researches against the deadly effects of fever and contagious disease.

Jack Currer is one of the resurrection men, taking risks to dig out more graves as the dangerous men lurk around the graveyards to hunt them.

His path crosses with the ambitious, vivid, reckless Hazel and they reluctantly turn into partner in crimes and the danger of the job, staying alive against terminal disease make them vulnerable. As sparks fly around them, they do everything to concentrate on their jobs. But as you may see: The intimate romance blossoms at most inappropriate places ( yes this book could be defined as graveyard romance! Isn’t it a fabulous new genre idea? )
Hazel takes the responsibility to be a doctor too hard, dealing with her capricious almost fiancée, barely resisting her feelings for Jack!

I went back and forth between giving this mind blowing story four and five stars but that WTH, OMG I’m screaming at the top of my lungs ending was game changer! I’m rounding up 4.5 stars to 5 dark, haunted, gory, thrilling, deadly, creepy, unputdownable stars!