My Rating
First and foremost, let’s talk about that striking cover image of a heart at first glance and on deeper scrutiny reveal the woman with a bent head and the dress that is spread out. And once you read this story, you realize how aptly the image has been conjured capturing everything and more, that the author has conveyed. Hats off to the designer.
Anatomy by Dana Schwartz is an extremely riveting tale, the author having the extraordinary ability to transport the reader to the exact setting of the story and endure the emotional upheavals of its characters in the dark and forbidding atmosphere. The historical era is captured so brilliantly and the gothic overtones add a kind of brooding atmosphere that every time Jack as a resurrectionist goes to a graveyard, I was walking in his footfalls and experiencing the same terror he was going thru. It makes one think of the predicament of the doctors and surgeons of that era who had to resort to these illegal means to make strides in the medical field.
Hazel’s character is another factor in the book that I absolutely loved. Her intense desire to study medicine and become a surgeon and her ability to use textbook knowledge to treat patients secretly, everything about her endears her to the reader. There are lots of puzzling incidents in the story, the threads of which never get tied up completely, and knowing that there is another book in the series, I am all in anticipation mode to know the progress of this love story which was hardly a love story.
Anatomy, book #1 in the A Love story series is historical fiction with gothic flavors and fantasy elements woven through it.
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.
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This is so clearly up your alley! I wish I liked romance a little more!
Yeah…I need romance somewhere to feel a little better, am sure will lose interest after a while but now it works 😃