I had the pleasure of reading this for BBNYA and now it is time to share my thoughts.
The Reanimator’s Heart
Kara Jorgensen
A reluctant necromancer, a man killed before his time, and the crime that brings them together.
Felipe Galvan’s life as an investigator for the Paranormal Society has been spent running into danger. Returning home from his latest case, Felipe struggles with the sudden quiet of his life until a mysterious death puts him in the path of the enigmatic Oliver Barlow.
Oliver has two secrets. One, he has been in love with the charming Felipe Galvan for years. Two, he is a necromancer, but to keep the sensible life he’s built as a medical examiner, he must hide his powers. That is until Oliver finds Felipe murdered and accidentally brings him back from the dead.
But Felipe refuses to die again until he and Oliver catch his killer. Together, Felipe and Oliver embark on an investigation to uncover a plot centuries in the making. As they close in on his killer, one thing is certain: if they don’t stop them, Felipe won’t be the last to die.
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I love it when a book surprises you, and this book certainly surprised me, considering death is a big part of it alongside a few gruesome murders it is a very endearing book, so much so that I found that I was always keen to get back to the story. This is of course because of the characters at the heart of the story, I definitely had a soft spot for both of them.
I loved seeing Oliver who is usually reserved around people, become more accepting of his power and open up to someone new. I loved Felipe who became softer around Oliver and managed to coax him into doing things he ordinarily wouldn’t whilst being mindful of his limitations in social settings.
They make such a wonderful pair, it was lovely having a slow and soft romance in amongst the action and mystery, they entirely enthralled me. I just wanted to know so much more about them, we do get to see more of Felipe’s family and how he came to this point in his life, but for both, I wish we could have gone a little deeper.
There were also some brilliant secondary characters, a little shout out to Mr Turpin who I found very intriguing, Gwen though was another stand-out character. She was great, a loyal friend to Oliver and willing to stick up for him but also give him a supportive nudge when he needed it.
The setting was perfect, the Paranormal Society was very interesting and I liked that I couldn’t entirely pinpoint the exact time of the setting but I could surmise enough clues from the text to create an image in my head. The writing was quite clever in that way, it had an unhurried pace and managed to convey a lot without having to explicitly say everything.
The story is very unique I loved the paranormal element, I loved that Oliver was struggling with the ethics of his ability, and the mystery had me eager to read on and kept me so invested in the story. I feel like with regards to the Paranormal Society and the character’s powers it was still very surface but I could forgive that to an extent because I feel the emphasis was more on the two main characters and their relationship.
I did have a bit of trouble with the climax of the story, there is a lot of build-up to what the villains are going to do only for it to essentially go unexplained. I don’t know what they were trying to do, why any of the things they were collecting were relevant, or how they were connected in the first place. Also after everything, what happened to them at the end was a little lacklustre considering what had happened to other characters earlier in the story. I felt as if I had missed something and had to go back and re-read parts because I had more questions than answers and I was somewhat frustrated that what had been building throughout the story didn’t quite have the payoff I was expecting.
Upon the first reading, I was so caught up in my frustrated feelings that I didn’t quite appreciate the ending and let it cloud what I had felt in the rest of the story, with a bit of space though and a chance to go back through it I remembered how much I had enjoyed the story overall. The Reanimator’s Heart ticks a lot of boxes, it has a fair dose of mystery and action, a supernatural edge, and a wonderful romance between two characters who I am excited to get to know a little better in the rest of the series.
Kara Jorgensen (she/they) is a queer, nonbinary oddball with a penchant for all things antiquated, morbid, or just plain strange. While in college, they realized they no longer wanted to be Victor Frankenstein but instead wanted to write like Mary Shelley and thus abandoned their future career in science for writing. Kara melds her passions through her books and graduated with an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing in 2016. When not writing, they can be found hanging out with their dogs watching period dramas or trying to convince their students to cite their sources.
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