I was gonna use my book review side blog for this but fuck it I can't write a coherent post about this. Book rec on main:
I'm begging people to read The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap. For the love of god I need someone to talk to about this book because it's making me insane!
Very fun, morbid dark academia/gothic adventure-mystery-coming of age featuring grave robbing, romance and murder most foul
Historical fiction! Set in 1828 Edinburgh during the Burke & Hare murders. Many of the characters were real people who lived (and died) through those events - with missing information creatively filled in to entwine them with the plot
well researched, to the point where when I was looking for more information on the events presented (as one does when The Neurodivergence ignites) I just kept running into stuff that was already in the book
Queer coming-of-age story without being a Queer Coming Of Age™️ story. Very sweet and complicated love story between two morally complex men of science
Very nice balance of tone; for all that it's a very funny book, it doesn't take away from the serious parts.
Characters are likable while retaining their complexity
Nye is peak weird girl rep despite not even being a girl. Nobody is doing it like him. I stand and respect a fellow collector of bugs and bones and dead bits.
James Willoughby is my favorite narrator ever, everyone else can go home <3
doesn't shy away from the gruesomeness of historical medicine or the moral complexities and often pretty awful shortcomings that led to the discoveries made in the period
nevertheless doesn't undersell just how fucking cool science and medicine are and how big of leaps in progress were being made!
Comes with a fun little book club question section <3 idk I just like books that have that
I gotta stress how much this book appeals to the little gothy nerd inside me. I checked it out from the library, read it, screamed, immediately made my baby sibling read it (as I must with all things dark and age-appropriate) and ordered myself a personal copy that WILL be worn out from rereading in a year's time
Seriously the last book that rearranged my brain chemistry like this was Funeral Songs For Dying Girls (<- STILL not over it btw; rereading soon)
Idk man all I can say is this scratched an itch I didn't know I had, and I 100% recommend it if you're interested at all in this period of history, you've ever wondered "what if Victor Frankenstein was gay?", you enjoyed that one episode of Good Omens, and/or listen to Lore podcast.
Content warnings for murder, graphic descriptions of dissection, sexist and homophobic language (briefly for both) and discussions of period-typical homophobic discrimination by the law.
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