Book Review: The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap

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The Details

Media Type: Audiobook
Title: The Resurrectionist
Author(s): A. Rae Dunlap
Publisher: Recorded Books
Pages/Length: 11 hours and 31 minutes
Release Date: January 21, 2025
Source: Library

Add it on: Goodreads | Amazon | Bookshop

Historical fiction, true crime, and dark academia intertwine in a harrowing tale of murder, greed, and the grisly origins of modern medicine.

Edinburgh, Scotland, 1828. Naïve but determined James Willoughby has abandoned his posh, sheltered life at Oxford to pursue a lifelong dream of studying surgery in Edinburgh. A shining beacon of medical discovery in the age of New Enlightenment, the city’s university offers everything James desires—except the chance to work on a human cadaver.

For that he needs to join one of the private schools in Surgeon’s Square, at a cost he cannot afford. In desperation he strikes a deal with Aneurin “Nye” MacKinnon, a dashing young dissectionist with an artist’s eye for anatomy and a reckless passion for knowledge. Nye promises to help James gain the surgical experience he craves—but it doesn’t take long for James to realize he’s made a devil’s bargain… Nye is a body snatcher—and James has unwittingly become his accomplice.

The Review

I feel I must start by admitting to you that I 100% picked this book up because of the cover. I purposely didn’t read the synopsis beforehand, because I wanted to be surprised by the contents. Pleasantly surprised, I was! The Resurrectionist is a historical fiction novel set in a fascinatingly dark period of Scottish history. Our protagonist James has left his comfortable life to explore his passions elsewhere which, of course, takes a fair amount of money. Money that he does not have. And so, our unsuspecting James ends up embroiled in a dark underworld, full of secrets.

Ah, this book. It was the perfect blend of friendship, intrigue, forbidden love and just downright darkness. I found myself scrambling after reading this to read the history from which this book was created. Here was a time period where studying the human body could only be done on corpses, and those corpses were only supposed to come from “acceptable means” such a prison deaths, suicide, or orphans who had no one to claim them. Of course this led to a shortage of bodies to be studied. Enter: the resurrection men.

Dunlap did such an excellent job of building James as character. As cocky as he could be at times, you could see that really all he wanted was to find purpose and acceptance. He was portrayed as a friend that was loyal to a fault which, as you might suspect, is what got him into trouble in the first place. When “Nye” entered the picture, and the beginnings of adoration began to blossom, I knew that our poor protagonist was doomed. The things we do for friendship are one thing. The things we do for love? Quite another.

The Resurrectionist does an excellent job of bringing the dark underbelly of this time period to life as well. From the apartment that James resides in, to the pristine school he studies in, down to the depths of the graves where corpses were snatched, every bit of this story comes vividly to life on the page. What I really enjoyed was the fact that at no point did this book lag. There were points where the writing felt a bit heavy, I do admit. However that didn’t stop the overall flow of the story. I was rapt from beginning to end.

If you’re looking for a story that balances the light and the dark, the clean world against the gritty one, I highly recommend giving The Resurrectionist a spot on your reading list. I enjoyed this immensely, and I’ll be back for whatever this author writes next.