THE UNDERTAKING OF HART AND MERCY by Megan Bannen – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen
Published by Orbit on August 23 2022
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 448
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: Six Feet Under meets You’ve Got Mail in Megan Bannen’s outrageously funny fantasy rom-com, complete with zombies, human-sized animal mail carriers, and a host of quirky, lovable characters.

Well, this was a delightful surprise! Humor can be hit or miss for me, but I’m thrilled to say Megan Bannen’s humor is just my type. I had so much fun with this book, and despite a few issues with the world-building, this is a hysterically funny, feel good story and a nice change of pace from my usual reads.

Mercy’s family owns Birdsall & Son Undertakers, one of many funeral homes on Bushong Island. But her father Roy Birdsall has health problems and is no longer able to do the strenuous day-to-day work to keep the business afloat. Mercy’s brother Zeddie, the “son” in Birdsall & Son, should be taking over, but he just flunked out of undertaker’s school and wants nothing to do with the family business. Mercy loves being an undertaker—caring for the dead bodies with salt and wrapping them in sail cloth, and hand carving the boats that will ferry the dead down the Salt Sea to the afterlife. But a competitor is trying to squeeze Birdsall & Son out of business, and Mercy doesn’t know what to do.

Hart Ralston is a Marshall from Tanria, a mystical prison where the dead are sometimes reanimated by lost souls. These drudges, as they’re called, must be stopped, and it’s Hart’s job to “kill” them and take the bodies to a licensed undertaker. Hart often winds up at Birdsall’s, despite the fact that he and Mercy seem to hate each other. Maybe it’s Mercy’s dog Leonard that Hart can’t seem to get enough of, because it’s certainly not Mercy, who flings insults at Hart whenever she sees him.

But Hart is lonely, and so one day he bares his soul in an anonymous letter addressed simply to a “Friend.” When Mercy winds up reading the letter, she decides to write back, and so beings a blossoming friendship between two lonely people—who have no idea who they’re writing to.

Hands down, the best thing about this book is the characters and their relationships with each other. Mercy and Hart are the main romantic couple (and that’s not a spoiler because this is a romance, and yes they eventually get together), and their relationship goes through all the familiar beats you’ve seen in many other romances. This is an “enemies to lovers” trope, but in addition to that you have the added element of two lonely people writing anonymous letters to each other, which is where the You’ve Got Mail comparison comes in. Bannen’s dialogue is so funny, and the banter between the two is so well written (they call each other “Hart-Ache” and “Merciless” and it was adorable!). And speaking of You’ve Got Mail, I’m thinking the author must be a fan of the movie, because there is one particular scene that almost word for word reminded me of the movie. Yes, I’ve watched that movie dozens of times and I can practically recite the dialogue along with the characters, lol.

Both Hart and Mercy have tough things they’re dealing with, which adds some nice depth to the story. Hart just lost his beloved dog Gracie, and he still mourns the death of his mentor Bill, who trained him as a Marshall and became a father figure of sorts. Hart has just been saddled with his own trainee, a young man named Pen Duckers, who annoys Hart in the beginning but eventually manages to smooth out Hart’s prickly personality. Mercy is trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life, and it’s hard because her family wants to sell the business, even though Mercy insists she loves being an undertaker. She’s also dealing with family drama—a brother who refuses to take over his birthright, an aging father who refuses to follow the doctor’s orders, and a sister who is just a little too observant and can read Mercy like a book. But her family is loud and lovable and close-knit, and I loved every one of them.

As for the world building, it was probably the weakest part of the story for me, although don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved some of the elements. But overall, I found it to be overly complex and confusing at times, and even now I’m trying to wrap my head around the logistics of Tanria and Eternity and how they relate to each other. Tanria is separated from the island of Bushong by portals. Hart is based in Tanria, because that’s where the drudges are and his job is to stop them from getting out, but when he kills a drudge he takes it to one of the many undertakers in Eternity (a city in Bushong? Not sure.) The whole business of souls not being able to “go home” and so they infect dead bodies was a cool idea, but why there were so many undertakers in one place never made sense to me. There’s a whole backstory about the Old Gods versus the New Gods and why Tanria was created in the first place, but I guess I wanted more details. I believe there is a map in the finished copy of the book, which would have been very helpful in visualizing this world (alas, my copy didn’t have one).

There’s also a whole story line that deals with keys, and I’m still not sure I understand it. When you are born, you get a birth key, and then when you get older, you pick the funeral home that your body will go to when you die, and you get another key that identifies that funeral home. Again, it seems like an idea that could have been really interesting, but thrown in with all of Bannen’s other intriguing ideas, it sort of got lost in the shuffle and didn’t really gel for me.

What I did love, though, was the idea of the nimkilim, life-sized animals who used to be messengers to the Gods but because the Gods are imprisoned and they no longer have that duty, they’ve been relegated to delivering mail to humans. We meet a giant rabbit named Bassareus and a giant owl named Horatio who become entangled with the letter exchange between Hart and Mercy. I loved the foul-mouthed Bassareus in particular, who uses the F word in just about every sentence and loves whiskey. 

In addition to the romance between Hart and Mercy, there’s plenty of action and drama. Hart and Duckers have their hands full with their dangerous job fighting drudges, and there are some nail-biting, high stakes scenes that had me on the edge of my seat. Mercy’s family is dealing with a rival funeral home that wants to buy out the family business, so there’s lots of tension about the future of Birdsall & Son. Add in lots of family drama, a pregnancy, a cute relationship between Duckers and Zeddie, and much much more, and there’s never a dull moment in this story. I don’t know if Bannen plans to write more books set in this world, but I sincerely hope she does, because I wasn’t ready to leave these characters behind. 

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.