The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy

 What It's About:

• Hart is a marshal who patrols the dangerous land of Tanria. Any corpses he finds (or creates by the slaying of zombie-like drudges) he has to deliver to an undertaker. 
• Mercy is single-handedly keeping her family's business Birdsall and Sons Undertakers running. 
• Mercy and Hart have never hit it off and every exchange they have is more trading of barbs than civil conversation. After a bad day and a run-in with Mercy, Hart pens an anonymous letter he addresses to a friend and posts it. Mercy mysteriously receives it, not knowing who it is from, and the two start up an anonymous correspondence.

“It annoyed Mercy to no end that after years of putting up with that insufferable marshal, some primal inner instinct continued to think he looked good enough to eat.”

My Thoughts:

• Content warning: This book contains depictions and discussions of death and grief.
• I felt like I warmed to Hart much more than Mercy – I'm not sure if this is because he was more loveable or because he felt more developed, I felt we saw a lot more of Hart's inner world than Mercy's, despite them both being POV characters.
• I adored Hart's apprentice Pen, and I liked the development of his dynamic with Hart. He was good for him.
• (Trying to word this carefully to avoid spoilers) – Hart spends the whole book convinced he is alone and friendless when we see that he is not at all. This is shown most clearly following a certain plot event toward the end of the book. I felt it was an accurate depiction of how self-esteem and mental health struggles can warp how we perceive our relationships with and value to others.
• At the start of the book it took me a while to get to grips with the fantasy setting & I'm still not entirely sure I understand the history and lore of Tanria and the old gods. In the beginning the fantasy elements & romance plot felt disconnected to me which had me wondering why it wasn't just a contemporary romance novel. This changed and the fantasy elements were integrated into the wider plot and romance plot further into the book, it just took me a while to get.
• On that note, I was a bit thrown by some of the fantasy terms used – maybe I was too distracted while I was reading the parts where these things were introduced and I missed some descriptions but it was a while before it was clear these weren't just weird fantasy names for cars, horses etc. Also, I was never quite sure if the land I should be picturing was supposed to be swampy marshland or Venice-like canals or what, but there was definitely water and lots of docks everywhere.
• The pantheon of gods and different names for days of the week confused me, especially when given as a reference to the passage of time, as I had no idea whether two days were supposed to have passed or six. These let it down overall for me, as I really enjoyed the romance plot and characters but I was often jarred out of the narrative by puzzling over these things.
• -A lovely romance that is definitely worth reading, although be warned I did sob heavily through the third act!

“I don't want to hear ‘I'm sorry, Mercy' or ‘I don't deserve you, Mercy' or ‘I hope you find someone else, Mercy'! I want to hear ‘I love you, Mercy'!”