Review: Glass Castles by Kelley York

Title: Glass Castles

Series: The Resurrectionists: Book One

Author: Kelley York

Length: 205 Pages

Category: Historical Romance

Rating: 4 Stars

At a Glance: Kelley York has an immensely engaging writing style that suits her historical settings and gives her characters depth. I’m already invested in seeing what book two in the series has in store.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: Lucas Walker has been down on his luck for years. Then he has a run-in with a surgeon named Henry Glass, who presents him with an unusual job opportunity: procuring corpses for Henry’s medical research. Out of work and out of options, and maybe just a little enamored with the shy and gentlemanly Henry, Lucas agrees. But between the perils of bodysnatching and the fear of being outed for his proclivities, Lucas has his hands full. Falling in love with his employer is the last thing he needs.

Review: Modern medicine owes a debt of gratitude to body snatchers and the anatomists who hired them. As macabre as it was to go about harvesting corpses from their eternal resting places, men such as Henry Glass, whose interest in gross anatomy improved and advanced surgical procedures, had few other options for hands-on learning. Men such as Lucas Walker, who was not unaccustomed to sleeping rough and going without food for long stretches at a time, knows needs must when the devil drives. Even if it means propositioning Henry in an alley one night in hopes of earning some much-needed coin. This is their story.

Kelley York writes beautiful gothic fiction. The Dark Is the Night series, which she coauthored with her wife, Rowan Altwood, is brilliant, exquisite, superb, and every other adjective that articulates sublime. Glass Castles doesn’t delve as deeply into the characters, the setting, the paranormal at all, or the ways in which the characters and setting influence one another, but Henry and Lucas are most certainly affected and driven by Henry’s insecurities, the job Lucas is hired to do, and the risk to them both should they—Lucas in particular—be caught.

Their feelings become entangled by the past and in the present, and it takes a grim turn of events to put things in motion. By then readers know Henry and Lucas, who they are and what matters to them, and are introduced to the people who mean the most to them. We also perceive the meanings of found family, loyalty, and friendship through those Henry and Lucas hold dear.

Kelley York has an immensely engaging writing style that suits her historical settings and gives her characters depth. I’m already invested in seeing what book two in the series has in store for its characters, Daniel Barker and Theseus Blackthorn.

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