I don’t even have the words. This story was compelling from the get-go. A young mother takes her sick child to a recommended doctor. He’s diagnosed with a rare heart defect due to the scarlet fever he’d survived the year before. A week later he disappears from their home and despite daily visits to the police, a handsome reward promised by his secret father, and friends searching for him, he remains lost.

A year later, she’s attending an anatomical tour (popular in those days) at the same doctor’s house when she hears her son’s irregular heartbeat and finds a heart in a jar labeled with his exact affliction.

She now knows in her bones what happened to her son. This story is about if and how she can prove it.

When Isobel cries out that the heart belongs to her missing son, she is quickly ushered out and is widely thought to be “a hysterical woman” whom no one takes seriously. We haven’t come much further honestly.

Determined to find the truth of what happened, she disguises herself and joins the doctor’s staff as his housekeeper. The story that unravels is complex and fascinating in such a morbid way.

This book is so well-done. Meticulously researched and loosely based on the Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh in the early 1800’s, @byjaimafixsen crafted an intriguing page turner (metaphorically because I listened to the audio.)

Speaking of the audiobook, #cathleenmccarron is fantastic as all the characters: the mother’s worried, then vengeful voice, the detached, striving doctor’s, the cool, compassionate DI. Oh my gosh. She’s amazing and truly brought this book to life for me.

I highly recommend this book!

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