The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy

 

Title: The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy

Author: Megan Bannen

Publisher: Orbit, August 23, 2022

Pages: 449

Genre: Fantasy

Hart is a marshal, tasked with patrolling the strange and magical wilds of Tanria. It’s an unforgiving job, and Hart’s got nothing but time to ponder his loneliness.  

Mercy never has a moment to herself. She’s been single-handedly keeping Birdsall & Son Undertakers afloat in defiance of sullen jerks like Hart, who seems to have a gift for showing up right when her patience is thinnest. 

After yet another exasperating run-in with Mercy, Hart finds himself penning a letter addressed simply to “A Friend”. Much to his surprise, an anonymous letter comes back in return, and a tentative friendship is born.  

If only Hart knew he’s been baring his soul to the person who infuriates him most—Mercy. As the dangers from Tanria grow closer, so do the unlikely correspondents. But can their blossoming romance survive the fated discovery that their pen pals are their worst nightmares—each other?

Set in a world full of magic and demigods, donuts and small-town drama, this enchantingly quirky, utterly unique fantasy is perfect for readers of The House in the Cerulean Sea and The Invisible Library.

I added this book to my TBR ages ago based on the cover alone. It's stunning, and just the right amount of macabre to pique my interest. I didn't read the blurb, I didn't check reviews before starting, I just put it on hold at the library and promptly forgot about it. 

After many, many, many weeks, the hold came through from the library, and I was neck deep in other series and reading challenges, so I passed up my chance. Then just before holiday reading season, or right in the thick of holiday reading season, my second hold attempt for this book came up, and I decided to borrow the book and give it its shot. Still without an inkling of what I was getting myself into. 

The fantasy aspect was the first part to take me by surprise, and what a delightful world. Portals, roaming kelpies, maybe but probably not dragons, zombies, multi theistic religions are the norm. The worldbuilding was beautiful and immense. Then we have an enemies to lovers thing going on. You get this very early on, and they are very passionately enemies. Not cutesy pranks enemies. Straight up, ruin your day to run into them, never a nice word to say to or about them enemies. And neither of them really knows why they act this way, but this is the way that they act. 

Then we start the epistolary part of this, and I was thrilled. I love the pacing of epistolary stories. You can pack a lot of information into a small number of pages through letters/texts/emails/etc. And I must say, I think that pacing was absolutely necessary for this book. The beginning started fairly slowly for me. I was wanting to be reading a holiday book, but trying to push through for my missed opportunity earlier in the year. And I really needed the quick back and forth of the epistolary section to invest in this couple. 

Hart is a rough and tumble soldier who has some big traumas to work through. Mercy is an upbeat undertaker who needs to learn to stick up for herself. They both have excellent character growth in this book, and it was a joy to read. 

Then we start seeing the true conflict, and the book quickly became impossible to put down. There's a mob boss trying to corner the market on undertaking, more zombies than ever before, and at one point I was forced to put the book down in order to check that it was, in fact, a romance novel. I cried many times, and I would say the last 15% of the book was just me holding back tears so my coworkers wouldn't worry about me. 

I highly recommend it!!!

---Here's where things may start to look a little different.---

Ratings

Stars: 5/5

Spice: 3/5

I really used to factor in a lot to those ratings. I can say, the cover still gets a 5/5, that thing is BEAUTIFUL. And this was my favorite book that I read last year! So of course it got 5 stars! I'm still learning and hopefully improving things as we go, so this isn't set in stone. But at the beginning of the year I came up with a Rating Scale for myself for Stars (overall story) and Spice (sexiness, duh) so I am using those guides to rate my future books for now. Check out my instagram to see those scales! I may end up posting them here as well, we shall see together. :) 

Happy Reading, 

Kristen