Anatomy: A Love Story
- Author: Dana Schwartz
- Published: January 18th, 2022
- Publisher: Wednesday Books
- Ratings: 4/5
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Goodreads synopsis
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 thoughts
First of all, I LOVE the cover it was what got me to look into this book and the premise of a gothic love story, but this is where I’m struggling with my rating. This book was marketed as a romance but is more fiction and a bit of a sweet slow burn romance. I loved the pairing here an opposite attracts, at first I wasn’t buying it but the more I got these two together the more I wanted them to be, I know it doesn’t make sense LOL..
It’s 1817 and we follow Hazel our 17 year old main character, she is smart, strong and wants nothing more than to become a surgeon but society expect women to just marry but Hazel wants more for herself, and since she was not allowed to attend medical school she works out a pact with a doctor and starts practicing medicine at her home.
Then We meet Jack the “resurrection man” (he steals recently deceased bodies) he develops a friendship with Hazel that then becomes something a little bit more and is a very slow burn but by the end I was just rooting for these two.
Now the things I did not liked were 1. the lack of romance or the fact that I was expecting the romance to be the main focus of the story and it wasn’t, but ok I’m over it since the mystery part of the story was good enough to keep me reading. 2. I didn’t know we were going to get fantastical elements here, why? this book was a bit of everything I wasn’t expecting it to be. 3. the ending felt rushed and that’s about all the negativity I have for this story.
I did like the story, I read it in one day I couldn’t put it down so that tells you the book wasn’t bad, it was good I guess I was just a bit annoyed about the romance, I loved the gothic vibe we got and the writing, I love the narrator I think she did an amazing job but most of all I love the cover.
And lastly, I’m hoping for a second book because I kind of feel that I got that feeling in the end like maybe We will get more and that will be very interesting to see.
Thank you to the Publisher and Netgalley for the advance audio copy
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