Mercy is an undertaker, taking over her dad's job after a heart attack and while waiting while his younger brother is ready to take over. Hart is a marshall who hunts creatures that are basically zombies. The two hate each other's guts, but sometimes they are forced to work together when Hart has to bring the zombies bodies to Mercy's establishment. However, one night Hart writes a letter without an address, and it gets delivered to Mercy. The two starts writing to each other without knowing their true identities.

In this magical world where gods and demigods are real, Mercy and Hart need to deal with their heritage, and they need to open up their feelings if they want a shot at happiness.

The story is kind of macabre, and the writing didn't pull me into the book as I would have expected. The world-building was great, but at the same time I found some aspects quite confusing.

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy was a weirdly wonderful book, unlike anything I've ever read before.

After hearing that the authors previous books had heartbreaking endings, I admit that I read that last page first so I could mentally prepare myself incase it wasn't a HEA.

I initially struggled to get into the book due to the wordbuilding, but I am glad I persevered because after a few chapters, I became obsessed. Hart and Mercy were very loveable and entertaining characters and found myself really connecting with Hart.

The romance was incredible. I was worried that mixing fantasy and romantic comedy wouldn't work for me but it totally did! I was overjoyed that this book combines my two favourite romance tropes: enemies to lovers and grumpy and sunshine.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and will definitely be rereading it sometime in the near future!

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. My review will be posted on Goodreads on the publication date.

This book was an unexpected, weird, delight.

Romance-wise, it had all the feels of the kind of fanfiction that keeps you up until 4 am even though you have work the next day. The hate to-“why do we hate each other again?”-to love, with the addition of the anonymous letters was the perfect combo.

The setting and fantasy elements were my personal favorite brand of weird. It was all a little nonsensical but still really atmospheric and the magical elements were explained really well.

Plot-wise, this book was definitely more vibes than plot. It didn’t really feel like any kind of plot came into it, beyond the characters falling for each other, until the 50/60% mark. That wasn’t a bad thing for me. I loved the vibes, but it’s not a particularly plot-heavy book if that’s something that’s important to you.

Where this book fell down for me was the characters. I like Hart and Mercy, and I loved Duckers, but I didn’t really like Mercy’s family. A huge source of the conflict in this book was about her family keeping secrets from each other that only Mercy knew, I didn’t like how they treated her when everything came out. I also didn’t like that she blamed herself when she didn’t do anything. Later in the book, when secrets were kept from her, she also acted in a way that just felt a bit over-dramatic, to be honest.

The last 10% was absolutely wonderful. I cried like a baby. Huge fan of owls and rabbits as delivery animals. Overall, this was a really lovely read and I’ll definitely be picking up a physical copy on release.

Content warnings: Death, injury, death of a parent, childbirth/pregnancy, violence, weapons.

Wow - I - just wow. I loved the concept going in but I was still blown away with what this book delivered. I honestly don’t know how to describe it, it was so unique. The characters although some completely fabricated, they seemed so real they could walk right off the page. I loved them. I loved them all. This was such a fun, heartbreaking, life affirming tale. Although I sobbed at the end, I also smiled and laughed. It really did fill me up.

Set in a world equally full of magic and demigods as it is donuts and small-town drama, this utterly unique fantasy is sure to sweep you off your feet. Oh what a beautiful story packed with heartwarming, uplifting and though-provoking narrative. This novel is funny and sad in equal parts but ultimately uplifting and life affirming.
Five star read from me!!

A unique, joyous story that had me laughing and smiling - but left me wanting more.

Thank you NetGalley, Megan Bannen and Orbit for the e-ARC!

Mercy is an undertaker who radiates sunshine and happiness. She has a deep, visceral hatred of the grumpy zombie killer, Hart, and loathes his very presence.
After a series of "you've got mail" style shenanigans, they end up falling for each other.

Honestly, this book had me prepared to fall in love with it. Everything from the unique premise and enemies to lovers romance, to the unusual jobs (A female undertaker!) to the zombie apocalypse vibes has me ready to mark this book down as a firm favourite. And it's not that the book wasn't good, because it really was. It just wasn't…enough.

My biggest issue was the romance arc. While Hart and Mercy are - and I really do mean this - incredibly cute and adorable together, their relationship arc just left me confused. I did know that they're enemies, and that they hate each others' guts. And yet I wasn't able to find any tangible reason why this was the case. We do eventually find out why, but in the grand scheme of the plot and the 4-year-long feud these two are supposed to have, the reasoning just didn’t make any sense. And when the characters do overcome their enemies stage and move into their lovers stage, it feels a bit too instantaneous and sudden to have any sort of emotional reaction. It wasn't organic enough to feel natural, which took away from the enjoyment of the "enemies to lovers" enjoyment.

The letters are a big part of their relationship and plot, and sure, they're cute. But they're not mesmerising. And given the importance they have in this story, I really wanted them to be mesmerizing. I think this added to the overall blandness of my opinion of this book.

That's not to say this book is bad. It's worldbuilding, plot, plot twists, and overall story are generally good. They just felt a bit mish-mashed together, instead of flowing seamlessly. I'm not sure if this was because the narration style didn't work for the book, or just for me personally, but something about it pulled me out of the story enough to notice tiny flaws that I otherwise would have been able to look past with no second thoughts.

The main redeeming factor for me in this book, was Hart and Mercy's dynamic. I didn't enjoy how suddenly they were out together, but once they were, Hart and Mercy owned my heart. They were the reason I stuck through everything else. Hart's open and obvious adoration of Mercy, and their banter and chemistry was top tier.

Overall, The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy was a fairly decent book. I’d recommend it if you enjoyed You've got Mail, The Princess Bride, and generally enjoy reading romance books. Personally, I was just left wanting a little more - A little more plot, a little more character development, a little more worldbuilding. It's a good read, but the premise, characters, and world had the potential to be great.

Rating: 3.5 stars

I loved this book. I would leave it there to be honest, but since I was provided an ARC I will try to articulate exactly how and why I loved this book.

I loved the cover, so that is always a good start. It hooked me from the first scene because it dumps you in medias res, and trusts the reader to infer by context. Your mileage might vary, and you might find the fact that by the end you still don't know what an equimaris looks like annoying, but I personally prefer it a million times over the narrative screeching to a halting stop to explain things that do not particularly need explaining.

We meet Marshall Hart Ralston and (deputised by life circumstances) undertaker Mercy Birdsall in the middle of their work and their interaction is tense. Like, boy oh boy. Megan Bannen however deftly constructs their extremely hostile relationship from the get go as one any outsider can easily tell as attraction. One soured in a perception of it being unrequited, Hart, and a knew jerk reaction to a blatant and quite childish pigtail pulling, Mercy. They even have nicknames for each-other, granted, horrible ones, but that is cute. I am sorry. It is.

We then get to actually look at this world through the eyes of Pen, Hart's new apprentice, and we get the outsider tour. The world building is fantastic, steampunk-ish western-feeling town with strong dark magical occurrences. There are old and new gods, a dangerous bubble world where monsters reside, dangers that marshals like Hart and Pen are risking their lives to keep from harming people. We also see Mercy with her family and her constant plates spinning to keep everything and everybody afloat. But as much as the book has a large worldbuilding setting the story itself is very intimate. Both Hart and Mercy are lonely, and they have lost the capacity to reach out to the people around them. They feel isolated and unable to break through their own built glass prisons.

Like in life itself, change starts with taking risks, and Hart does this by pouring his heart and his longing in a letter and posting it to the ether (or in this case their talking animals magical post workers). This launches the epistolary romance section of the book and it is DELIGHTFUL. People might make the error of comparing it with You Got Mail, for me it felt more like Practical Magic.

<blockquote>I’m intrigued by what you said about many people being lonely. It’s a sobering thought. Most people seem so dull to me, balloons full of vacuous wind and empty words. I wonder what I would find if I tried to dig deeper every now and again?</blockquote>

What Hart and Mercy do for each other is not only lending a shoulder and an ear, but present the chance to reconsider their own preconceptions, which they both take, to their eternal credit. This is where both Hart and Mercy took room free in my heart for ever, and where the book really flies.

Telling you about the rest would be spoilery, so let's just say the entire cast of characters is fantastic. This book is diverse in all aspects down to the talking animals and quirky in the best of ways. It also bangs. Like hot damn.

The ending is fraught with tension and extremely satisfying.
All around an instant classic and a forever favourite.

This was a fun read, it moved quickly and I liked the characters. This was essentially a romance so if your not a fantasy reader then don’t be put off this one as really the only fantasy element was some zombie-ish characters. I enjoyed the use of letters to build the narrative (although the weren’t sexy so don’t get too excited about sexy pen pals 🤣) and I liked how the characters opened up to strangers but I didn’t feel much chemistry between them until they were actually together.

I adored her brother and his boyfriend, they really stole the show for me and I would absolutely read their story 🤣I think the second half of this book is much stronger than the first and I’m glad I kept reading.

Wow! What an amazing original novel! I loved this unusual world with the strict funeral rites. Mercy, the undertakers daughter, bearing the weight of responsibility for her family. Hart, the Marshall, bearing the weight of unspeakable loss and guilt.

The ‘enemies to lovers’ trope is played out really skilfully here, with the narrative alternating between Mercy and Hart’s POV

I will update the review with a link to our blog closer to publication date.
I'd like to thank the publisher Orbit and netgalley for providing me with an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve heard this book pitched as You’ve Got Mail with zombies, with promises of a bickering, rompy romance like Howl’s Moving Castle, but for me, it didn’t live up to the premise at all. The main cause is the narrative voice it aims for funny and tongue-in-cheek but misses the grace and lightness with words, somehow, so that instead of making me smile the turns of phrase made me wince. The animosity between the characters also seemed played up over the top, too, which didn’t make me buy into the romance. Which is a shame — I really wanted to like it.

Thanks to #NetGalley for providing the arc.

First off, I should probably start by saying that I'm not a massive fan of rom-coms, so it may well be that I was not the ideal audience for this story. Secondly, I spent quite a bit of the time reading this book going 'no, that's dumb, surely they'd see what's really happening here' at the protagonists, which is always frustrating. Thirdly, and finally for now, this is a book that doesn't really know what it wants to be and kept jumping between the things it could be, of which more later.

The basic premise of The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy is that our eponymous protagonists have a working relationship - Hart is a marshal, whose job it is to hunt down dead bodies inhabited by spirits and separate the two, while Mercy runs the local undertakers to which he takes said bodies. The two of them had a run-in when they first met and now have a very prickly relationship and, since this is a rom-com, this means they will eventually end up together (in this case, via the mechanism of anonymous letters.

The big problem for me is that the book itself has a really weird sense of pacing. We spend a good chunk at the start establishing just how much these two dislike each other (based on a really dumb misunderstanding) and sorting out a bit of the world-building. Then there are the really unconvincing letters, which might have been better alluded to than actually written out because I had to massively suspend my disbelief that all but the most love-starved individual might find them engaging.

When our protagonists get together, suddenly it's all action, before the author seems to realise 'whoops, I have left quite a few plot threads from the non-boning side of things hanging' and then spends the final quarter of the book manufacturing a misunderstanding between them and remembering it's a fantasy novel again.

All in all, a bit of a frustrating read and one I probably wouldn't have finished if I hadn't picked it up as an ARC. But, given my usual track record, I'm sure it will be a massive best-seller, people will rave about it and adore it forever. Not me, though.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, via Netgalley. This is my honest review of the book in question.

Fresh and fun. A well realised alternative world reminiscent of the wild west but with lots of water. Charming characters, good relationships and moments of high tension (and tears). A warm hearted book and I will definitely look out for more works by Megan Bannen thanks to Orbit and Netgalley for this free ARC in return for an unbiased review.

This book had such a bonkers premise yet pulled off its uncategorizableness so brilliantly. the characters were so charmingly tenderhearted, the calmly paced plot came together so cleanly and cleverly by the closing chapters - plus, Mercy and Hart (and all their puns and pining) had no business being so chuffing cute!

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK/Orbit for kindly passing on this ARC 💫

This should’ve been the perfect book for me, but it just didn’t work for me.

I didn’t really feel invested in any of the character’s stories and found the romance between Hart and Mercy lacklustre. The letters they sent to each other didn’t strike me as moving or touching either.

The world building seemed messy to me.

My main critique though is that the plot dragged. I lost interest at some point and had to force myself to finish the book.

Overall this wasn’t for me, but I do get the appeal the book has for other people.

A charming and whimsical romance that subtly weaves in an intriguing fantasy world. The romance is largely developed through anonymous letters, which is always fun. If you enjoyed The House in the Cerulean Sea or A Winter's Promise, then you will love this!

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy absolutely blew me away. It's a beautiful classic romance set in a whimsical world. Hart and Mercy ripped my heart out and stitched me back together time and time again.

Bannen has created an intricate and intriguing world. With both modern and old fashioned elements it almost reads like a contemporary romance novel despite it being so clearly set in a fantasy world. This is how it manages to be a mostly light-h(e)arted read -with some incredibly passionate and h(e)art-wrenching moments to make you question why you ever dared to pick up this novel in the first place.

I laughed, I cried (a lot), I yelled (mostly at Hart) and I fell in love with both the world and the characters. I can only hope we'll get a spin-off including some of the amazing side characters we got go meet, because I would love to return to this world any time!

Thank you to orbit and Netgalley for the ARC.

This is the first time I've read a book with such a unique concept and world building as The Undertaking Of Hart and Mercy, and it reminds me of a ghibli film, so reading it feels more like watching anime than live action, especially since it includes zombies. I had high hopes for it, but I became bored halfway through; I don't feel any chemistry between Hart and Mercy, despite the fact that they can be classified as enemies to lovers; and I believe that none of the characters are as strong and convincing as the author describes. Regardless, I enjoyed it.

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy tries to do a lot of things--to be romantic, to be poignant, to be funny--and it's not that it fails at those things, exactly, but that it doesn't quite succeed at them, either.

On paper, The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy is a novel that should've been--and that I very much expected to be--an instant favourite. But the execution really let me down here. It attempts a lot, but the writing just doesn't sustain or hold up all the things it's attempting. First, the romance: again, on paper all the elements were there, but in practice they didn't come together--which is a shame, because it really was poised to be such a great romance. For one, there's the fact that it's based on You've Got Mail, which is one of my all time favourite movies. For another, it's also such a great setup in general: the enemies-to-lovers, epistolary-romance, dramatic-irony of it all. For me, though, it didn't quite work. I didn't really get why the characters hated each other--the novel does eventually tell us why, but its explanation felt flimsy and not very believable given that these characters have disliked each other for 4 whole years--and then when they did stop hating each other, it felt way too abrupt and not organic enough of a development. The novel spends a lot of time in the beginning setting up the characters' letters to each other, and the letters were nice, but nothing about them really struck me as especially moving or special either. The word I keep reaching for is generic: the letters were nice, sure, but they just never surprised or moved me in any way. (That the romance is inspired by/retells You've Got Mail doesn't do the novel any favours because You've Got Mail does it all--the setup, the characters, the dialogue, the conflict, the resolution--so much better.) (Then again it is one of my all time favourite movies, so a lot to live up to there, I guess.)

What I felt about the romance--that it was lackluster, that it was more than a bit disappointing--I pretty much felt about the rest of the novel. The worldbuilding was fine, the plot was fine, but neither elicited anything in particular from me, and they both felt a bit cobbled together in their execution. Had I been more invested in the romance, I wouldn't have minded the weak worldbuilding or plot--I can forgive a novel a lot if I feel drawn to its characters and/or their relationships--but because I wasn't, those weaker elements stood out to me all the more.

I think what it comes down to for me is that this novel was really missing a strong sense of narrative voice. (Or maybe that its narrative voice just wasn't to my taste.) Frankly, I don't care about the plot or worldbuilding stuff all that much--or at least, I only care about it up to a point. What I'm really here for is the characters, and I just didn't feel like these characters were that distinct or impressionable. I could tell what The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy was trying to do as a novel, but at the same time I could also tell that what it was trying to do wasn't working for me. I can see this novel working for a lot of readers--and again, it wasn't a complete write-off for me--but as a whole it just lacked that strong sense of personality that's at the forefront of the kind of books that I tend to love.

Thanks so much to Orbit for providing me with an e-ARC of this via NetGalley!

Thank you to orbit for my digital copy of this. I was so excited for this one, the blurb itself was brilliant and the story had SUCH potential. Unfortunately it fell flat of my expectations. I felt like I was being told rather than shown a lot, and the enemies to lovers aspect needed work. At times the characters themselves felt quite superficial and under-developed. Because of this I didn’t finish it but it has all the makings of a brilliant book if it’s fleshed out and edited more,