Score: 4/5 Bookmarks

I was literally counting the days until The Orphan of Cemetery Hill, by Hester Fox, came out. I read her last book, The Widow of Pale Harbor, this time last year and they are just the perfect fall reads. They’re cozy and mysterious, dark, and atmospheric. Like really, really atmospheric. You can almost smell the wet leaves on the ground and the cold mist as it swirls around as you read. Both books that I’ve read by this author have also had a little bit of romance thrown in, which has been fun too.

Tabby is an orphan, who has been abandoned by her sister and finds herself hiding in a cemetery. You would think that someone who could talk to the dead, and is harassed by ghosts on the regular, wouldn’t go anywhere near a cemetery, but she finds comfort in hiding out there and before long it starts to feel like home.

Over the years Tabby builds a small life for herself, but it’s interrupted by the return of a boy she met years ago, and also by a wave of body-snatching that’s taken over the city. Bodies are being taken by The Resurrection Men who believe in a strange mix of science and the occult, and are performing all sorts of nefarious acts.

I enjoyed this book immensely. It only lost one star because I would have liked a little more build-up and backstory between some of the characters. The relationships didn’t feel fully fleshed out to me. But otherwise, it couldn’t have been a better spooky season read.

The audiobook is fantastic, at just over nine hours long, and is narrated wonderfully by Lauren Ezzo (who also performed The Widow of Pale Harbor). You can grab a copy via the button below, or get the physical book here.

Synopsis:

The dead won’t bother you if you don’t give them permission.

Boston, 1844.

Tabby has a peculiar gift: she can communicate with the recently departed. It makes her special, but it also makes her dangerous.

As an orphaned child, she fled with her sister, Alice, from their charlatan aunt Bellefonte, who wanted only to exploit Tabby’s gift so she could profit from the recent craze for seances.

Now a young woman and tragically separated from Alice, Tabby works with her adopted father, Eli, the kind caretaker of a large Boston cemetery. When a series of macabre grave robberies begin to plague the city, Tabby is ensnared in a deadly plot by the perpetrators, known only as the “Resurrection Men.”

In the end, Tabby’s gift will either save both her and the cemetery—or bring about her own destruction.