Overall: 3.5 rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋 (I could have used more details)
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥
Humor: Yes, a bit
Perspective: Third person from both hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? a pretty balanced mix
When mains are first on page together: Almost immediately
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes
Format: bought audiobook

Should I read in order?
This is the first in this series.

Basic plot:
Hart and Mercy have a relationship – he brings the bodies, she takes care of them. They are also have the utmost dislike for each other. It takes writing unsigned letters for each of them to open up to each other, though they don’t actually realize who they are writing to...

Give this a try if you want:
- fantasy romance
- epistolary
- enemies to lovers
- many, many dead bodies…
- pets – heroine owns a dog that the hero is in love with
- small size difference – Mercy is tall but Hart is even taller
- secret keeping
- quite angsty and emotional!
- lower steam – there’s like 2 scenes I found notable, the rest were pretty vague or faded

Ages:
- Heroine is 30, didn’t catch hero

First line:
It was always a gamble dropping off a body at Birdsle and Son Undertakers but this morning the bride of fortune favorite Hart Ralston

My thoughts:
This one had a lot I did enjoy about it, but quite a bit of it didn’t work the best for me. Overall though, I can definitely see why this book has been all over my feed.

What I really loved:
- I loved that it was basically a zombie plotline without being post apocalyptic Earth zombies 😂 There’s just something about those Earth zombies I can’t handle but this was so much more bearable…
- I loved the emotional angst of this novel. I mean, it really tore me up in some places. I felt their hurt so keenly.
- I really liked both mains. I thought the character depth was well done and I enjoyed getting to know both of them and loved them together.

What I struggled with:
- I’ll be honest, for some reason I was expecting way more in the steam department. It’s there...but this book felt pretty long and the first scene felt decent but the rest were pretty short.
- I was a bit sad with the tension build in this one. I just struggle with that when characters tend to not really be into each other/thinking about each other and then all of a sudden they have sex. I was hoping for a bit more build up I think.
- I felt like they were apart SO MUCH in this book. And I know that added to building their characters and fantasy can be like that...but I was just always reading about Hart and his partner and Mercy and her family and *makes smushing motions with hands * just put them together!!!
- My biggest hurdle though was the secret keeping. It’s just one of my pet peeves – things that break trust just kill me. And the fact that right before that, Mercy was pointing out some good points that Hart should be thinking about and instead he got angry and raged at her. The whole thing just made me side eye him...

So I’m glad I read this one. Overall it was a good read and I really liked the narration for it too. I’m not sure if I’ll pick up the next one but that’s purely on my own personal likes in romance that I’m not sure will be met.

Endearments

Hmmm, not endearments haha. But Mercy calls Hart ‘Hart-less’ and Hart calls Mercy ‘Mercy-less’. 

Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.

- toxic family and secret keeping
- death and violence of page
- zombie vibes

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

Safe sex: 

Condoms used 

Chapter 22 of 41 – kiss
Chapter 23 – missionary

“Take off your clothes before I strangle you.”

Chapter 26 – some mention of prior lovemaking
Chapter 27 – her on top

She pushed him to the settee and straddled him.
“Why are you still dressed?” she demanded, exasperated, as she unbuttoned and unzipped his dungarees.

Chapter 28 – a fade to black scene
I think there was another scene or two but they were either vague or faded and I didn’t really count them.