⭐⭐⭐
Blurb
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.
Fast Facts
Genre: historical novel
Setting: 1817 Edinburgh
Themes and tropes: woman against the system, royalty and commoner romance
Review
Genre struggle
This is marketed as “a gothic tale full of mystery and romance”. Well. Sadly, I wouldn’t call this gothic. The setting has the potential to be gothic – a family, where a tragedy has occured living in a castle in 19th century UK. Good start. However, that’s the end of it. There is no creepiness in the setting, Hazel comes and goes as she likes. Even though other people and the narrator present Edinburgh as this dark and dangerous city, it’s just talk. Yes, bad things are said to happen to poor people and there is the quote: “It was amazingly easy to die in Edinburgh. People did it every day.” I mean yeah, people die in every city though and all this is only mentioned and happens off stage. The only death that affects our protagonist Hazel is the death of her brother George that happens pre-story and she doesn’t seem too upset by it anyway. Our protagonist is nice and safe whatever she does. Regarding the gothic and what could’ve been done. There is a portrait of Hazel’s dead brother – it could’ve given her chills, there could’ve been the gothic trope of a portrait seemingly looking at her creepily. She wears George’s clothes, that could’ve been used to support the aspirational gothicness, instead it’s used only to demonstrate the gender difference between clothes. The castle could’ve had more of a personality and be chilling. A castle isn’t automatically a gothic setting if it’s nice, safe and cosy. The dead bodies are mostly presented as a practical matter to practice medicine with, also could’ve been worked with better if the aim was to have a gothic story. Kind of seems to me that Dana Schwartz has written a story and the marketing team said “Hey, what if we marketed it as gothic? That has a cool ring to it!” Don’t get me wrong, all the things I’ve listed here are completely fine, it just doesn’t fit the way the book is marketed.
The mystery and fantasy elements part. The latter was presented in the epilogue and then again only at the very end. You don’t anticipate fantasy, the book is presenting itself as a relatively realistic historical story and then suddenly bam, magic at the very end. It just doesn’t work. As for the mystery, I would say that also kicks off way too late and because of that I did not even really know I was to be looking for mystery and figuring something out. I did not make the connection between Jeanette’s missing periods and the older countess getting pregnant at all. Jeanette said it’s the scar she got when her appendix had to be taken out and 40 is an older age to get pregnant but sometimes that happens. You don’t really get to sit with the mystery and so it didn’t really interest me who was kidnapped and what happened to them.
Love story. The two lovers properly meet after the halfway mark of the book, which is way too late to develop a proper romance. When they go grave robbing, Jack suddenly has the urge to kiss her “I should kiss her right now!”. So eventually they kiss in a grave and fall asleep there. Uh, cute I guess? Their relationship feels bland, there’s not much to Jack in terms of personality and I just feel the book falls short on the romance part.
Too crowded at the end & What are we trying to do here?
As I’ve mentioned before the genres are a big ol’ mess. Another thing that is confusing is the ever-changing objective of the story. I was super excited when Hazel made the deal with Dr. Beecham that if she manages to sit the exams without going to the classes, women will be allowed in his lectures and Hazel will fulfill her dream! But then in the second half there was the supposed mystery we were supposed to focus on. And then Hazel decided she’s going to cure the Roman fever but that disappeared as quickly as it came. And then when she was finally supposed to sit the exam and because a doctor, the moment this whole book has been building up to… she doesn’t. And instead we get a resolution to a plotline I didn’t even really care about. The last few chapter are so unnecessarily stuffed, it’s a pity.
Language, please!
I feel like the nobility and the common people speak pretty similar. There could’ve been more of a differentiation. Sometimes the speech sounded anachronistic as well, I am pretty sure nobody at that time would use the word “boyfriend”.
So why the three stars?
I really liked the set-up and the potential. I liked the feminist themes and that Hazel’s mother didn’t push her into marriage just because of some arbitrary values, but because she knew marriage was the only way Hazel wouldn’t have to be at the mercy of her younger brother or other relatives. Dr. Straine and his attitude was interesting:
I wouldn’t object to teaching the rare woman who had a mind capable of natural philosophy and the study of the body. Yes, on the whole, the female brain is smaller, more susceptible to hysterics and emotion, less inclined to reason. But there’s no reason to believe that a specimen might not emerge from the female sex able enough to be taught. (…) No, I refuse to teach women for a simple reason: I do not waste my time nor energy on dilletantes. (…) No hospital will hire a female surgeon, nor any university. Even less willing, I imagine, would be a patient to suffer beneath the knife of a woman.
Chapter 10
Misogynystic still, of course, but at least it’s not a straightforward “women dumb, no school for them”. Dr. Strainer was a generally well-built character. I also loved the crossdressing á la The Twelfth Night (I’m a sucker for that) and also Hazel’s servant Iona. The mystery and fantasy would’ve been amazing if they were presented throughout the whole story. The writing is fine, aside from what I’ve mentioned. And I did feel myself being drawn in and I was cheering for Hazel to show it to all them beardy men and for women to be allowed to study medicine thanks to Hazel’s effort. And it’s a nice and quick read. There’s just so much unfulfilled potential and things that don’t make sense.
Leave a Reply