Bumpy Oak Books

**I was provided an electronic ARC from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for honest review.**

4 stars

Dana Schwartz presents Anatomy, which is a love story in many ways. Readers follow Hazel at the turn of the 19th century. She is to be married to a future viscount, but her true love has always been science. Hazel wants nothing more than to be a physician, but she finds herself ahead of her time. After being denied the ability to attend anatomy classes due to her sex, she decides to find her own way to study for the physician’s exams. For that, she’ll need bodies. Many of them.

Hazel strikes a delicate balance of being headstrong and independent without falling too terribly far into “not like other girls”. In fact, it is abundantly clear that Hazel hasn’t given much thought to other girls or to anything beyond her dream. As surface level as that might seem, I actually found that I liked Schwartz’s choice to make Hazel a bit short-sighted. Jack, of course, was a perfectly charming addition to the story and I found I liked him best. Schwartz did well with balancing the studious portions of the story with the more action packed and tense, even if things did resolve too quickly and neatly for me.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time spent reading Anatomy and would say that it is similar in tone and content to Stalking Jack the Ripper and to The Corpse Queen. Fans of those series seeking more of the similar vibes will find it here, though for some it may strike too similar.

I look forward to future works from the author and am glad to have had the opportunity to read this novel early.