Cadaver & Queen

By: Alisa Kwitney

Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld

Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

When Elizabeth Lavenza enrolled at Ingold as its first female medical student, she knew she wouldn't have an easy time. From class demands to being an outsider among her male cohorts, she'll have to go above and beyond to prove herself. So when she stumbles across what appears to be a faulty Bio-Mechanical - one of the mechanized cadavers created to service the school - she jumps at the chance to fix it and get ahead in the program.

Only this Bio-Mechanical isn't like the others. Where they are usually empty-minded and perfectly obedient, this one seems to have thoughts, feelings...and self-awareness.

Soon Elizabeth realizes that it is Victor Frankenstein - a former student who died under mysterious circumstances. Victor, it seems, still has a spark of human intelligence inside him, along with memories of things he discovered before his untimely death...and a suspicion that he was murdered to keep that information from getting out.

Suddenly Elizabeth finds herself intertwined in dark secrets and sabotage that puts her life, and the lives of Victor and their friends, in danger. But Elizabeth's determined to succeed - even if that means fighting an enemy who threatens the entire British Empire.

©2018 Alisa Kwitney (P)2018 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

Good Historical YA

So Cadaver & Queen is sort of Victor Frankenstein retelling. To be honest, I saw the cover and thought the plot was similar to SJTR so I gave it shot. While it didn’t become my favorite book of all time, it did have its moments.

Our story is centered around Elizabeth Lavenza as she is the first female medical student in Ingold. Ingold is also making mechanized cadavers called Bio-Mechanicals.

»Elizabeth: She didn’t see why she had to choose between being a doctor and being a wife someday. She was a woman before her time in wanting to go against the life that she was told she should want.

»Victor: I loved him. Should I say more? So much wrong had been done to victor that I was amazed that he was still as pure as he was. He didn’t let being a Bio-Mechanical hold him back from finding himself again or love.

I was sold on their relationship very early on in this book. While these two were different on the outside, they were very similar on the inside. Both of them were stubborn and shared a love of learning. There were some swoon worthy moments between these two that left me smiling.

Besides the romance, it seems like everything else fell a little flat for me. The best way I can describe this book is to call it SJTR without the humor and more on the scientific side. There were A TON of medical terms that seemed to take away from the story while you were reading. Hell, I had to keep searching some of the terms just so I could picture everything correctly.

Now don’t get me wrong. The world she built around having Bio- Mechanicals was great. I just don’t feel like everything was executed well.

By the end, all of my questions weren’t answered and I was left a bit unsatisfied. There is a book two but it looks to be Agatha. Hopefully, we get some drop-ins from Elizabeth and Victor!