I’ve noticed a bit of a pattern with my book reviews. Usually a five star read for me is the kind of book that rips your heart out and stomps on it. The Impossible Girl breaks that pattern - it didn’t make me cry, but it is perfect.

Kang has written about a pretty gruesome, yet fascinating part of history - a time of body snatching, where fresh corpses were sold to medical schools for dissection. The people who did the grave digging were called resurrectionists, and business was booming. The Impossible Girl focuses on 19th century New York, and a girl in hiding with two hearts - a very attractive target for the more ruthless men of the trade.

Cora Lee, the only female resurrectionist in the city, seems to spend her life straddling two worlds: the daytime world of the living, and the nighttime world of stealing the dead. It’s an odd choice, being involved in a job where you could also end up being the prize. But she pulls it off with style. However, hiding in plain sight means she can only trust a select few people in her life. She’s a wonderfully complex character - Kang has a great talent for characterization.

Her world building skills are also right up there - I felt completely immersed in the New York City of that time period. And the story itself has a nice balance of drama paired with the minutia of 19th century medicine. Kang is actually a physician, and she doesn’t hold back on the medical terms and the gore that goes hand in hand with medical school at that time in history. Even her explanation of Cora’s two hearts is fascinating stuff.

But The Impossible Girl is also a mystery, and it kept me guessing the whole way through. There are a couple of BIG reveals that left me stunned - I didn’t see either coming. I love when that happens.

Lydia Kang has previously written a book following similar themes - A Beautiful Poison. I definitely need to track it down!