It’s 1828 and James Willoughby has just arrived in Edinburgh to begin his medical studies at the university. Having found himself completely unsuited to the career in the church that his parents had planned for him, James has decided that medicine is his true vocation. After speaking to some of his fellow students, he discovers that due to the large class sizes the university can only offer very limited opportunities for practical experience. In order to gain the surgical knowledge he desires, it will also be necessary to attend one of the city’s private anatomy schools where he’ll be able to dissect and study the human body for himself.

Although James comes from a wealthy family, they have fallen on hard times since his father’s death. There’s enough money to pay for his lodgings at the Hope and Anchor Inn, but not much else. If he wants to go to anatomy school, he’ll have to find a way to pay the fees himself. Signing up for Dr Malstrom’s prestigious school, James confides in the doctor’s apprentice, Aneurin MacKinnon, explaining his financial difficulties. Aneurin – or Nye, as he prefers to be called – tells him he may have a solution to the problem. And with that, James finds himself drawn into the secretive, macabre world of body snatching – taking corpses from graves under cover of darkness and selling them to anatomists for study and research purposes.

I loved this book! As a debut novel it’s very impressive and I’ll certainly be looking out for more by A. Rae Dunlap. From the very first page she captures the formal feel of the 19th century novel and manages to avoid using the sort of inappropriately modern language that could have so easily pulled the reader out of the historical setting. As with Ambrose Parry’s Raven and Fisher series, there are lots of insights into the medical world of 19th century Edinburgh, with the focus here being on the study of anatomy and surgery and how progress was hampered by the lack of human cadavers for students to work with. Edinburgh itself provides an atmospheric setting for the novel, especially as most of the action, for obvious reasons, takes place at night. There are lots of suitably Gothic descriptions of lonely cemeteries, dark alleys and disreputable inns, all forming the backdrop to the trade of body snatching.

The Resurrectionist is narrated by James Willoughby, whom I really liked and believed in as a character. He begins the novel as an innocent, well-meaning young man who has led a somewhat sheltered life and who gradually grows as a person as he has his eyes opened to things and experiences he had never imagined. Over the course of the novel, we see a friendship form between James and the more worldly Nye, which eventually develops into something more. I thought the story was already interesting enough without adding a romance, but it does seem to arise naturally from the characters’ interactions rather than being forced in for the sake of it. It also provides an extra sense of danger, as both men are under no illusions as to the importance of keeping their relationship secret and what could happen to them if they are found out.

Although James and Nye and their friends are fictional, several other characters in the book really existed, most notably the infamous Burke and Hare, probably the best known body snatchers – or ‘resurrectionists’ – in history. As competition amongst the city’s anatomists increases and tasked with providing a steady supply of corpses for their employer Dr Knox, Burke and Hare decide that in addition to grave robbing, there could be another way to meet the demand for bodies. I knew very little about Burke and Hare before reading this book, so I enjoyed seeing how things played out for them and how Dunlap seamlessly worked them into James and Nye’s fictional story while also staying true to the historical facts.

The end of the novel wraps things up enough to make this a satisfactory standalone, but also sets up a potential sequel. This one felt very much like a coming of age novel for James, so I would be interested to see what the future has in store for him. If Dunlap has decided to move on and write something different, though, I will be equally interested to read whatever it is!

I thought the main character, James, was exceptionally well drawn and the story was good. I particularly liked his story about the Scottish weather not matching his clothing choices. Altogether a good read.

3.5 ⭐



I liked James, and indeed Nye, despite the strange way in which they pass their time.
They made the whole ressurectionist thing feel like quite an adventure. It's definitely not a dark and gritty story, in fact it feels quite light hearted at time.
That would be the banter between characters.
I was enjoying it enough before throwing some famous names into the mix, but that certainly got my interest up more.

An enjoyable way to spend a few hours, despite all the corpses... or maybe because of them. 😁

This is a really difficult book to rate! I see some reviews say it's too dark and others say it's not dark enough, so it feels very subjective. The highlight for me was definitely the romance, which was sweet and I really loved the chemistry between the characters.

That said, I didn't really vibe with the book as a whole. Overall I liked it and had a good time reading it, but it felt like there was a bit too much going on at any one given time. Queer awakening, academia/science, family trauma, coming of age, action/adventure, murder mystery, Burke and Hare, and romance. And because there was so much going on, with new plot elements being introduced, the topics didn't feel as deep as they could have, resulting in a very YA feeling plot with characters that felt too much like archetypes. (There was a bit of showing rather than telling, which didn't help that impression.)

I think if you go into this expecting an upper YA or NA story, you'll enjoy it. I'd also recommend you don't read the synopsis, which makes it sound grittier of a story than it really is (and this is about as cozy as a book about gravedigging can be).

So even though I have complicated feelings about this book (my rating keeps changing but it's probably closer to a 3.5): there is room for a sequel and I'd still read it because I'd love to see where the characters end up.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for the ARC!