Hi friends! So today I'm going to be doing a review on "The Restorative Artist" by Cecil Fenn. This review is going to be short and sweet (like the title suggests) and spoiler free (however there will be the Netgalley synopsis in this and sometimes it can contain spoilers so please keep that in mind!)
"An embalmer haunted by the death of his lover pulls apart his relationship and his funeral home to escape the pain of grief. Queer book club meets gothic horror in this debut novel from a former funeral professional.
Graham has built his life around the dead. He's a talented embalmer, the devoted director of his own funeral home, and the guiding hand behind a small but respected team. After a corpse - carried illness forces him to reckon with his own mortality, Graham struggles to confront the lingering pain of a recent loss. Grief, he finds, is not so easily diagnosed, dissected, and named. It is not so easily cured.
Betrayed by his body and unable to accept the pain death has caused him, Graham loses faith in his profession and the person he's become in its service. The past - which he imagines as a story of love and self - acceptance - becomes Graham's refuge. But in the present, influenced by increasingly gruesome visions of the deceased, Graham withdraws from his funeral home with devastating consequences for himself, his new girlfriend, and his colleagues. As his life, and even his sanity, starts to fragment, Graham struggles to rediscover the importance of his work and the history that haunts him before he loses everything and everyone close to him.
The Restorative Artist is a dissection of memory and embodiment, set against the morbid decadence - and sterilising secresy - of the US funeral industry. Through Graham's confrontations with the spectre of his deceased lover, the horror of his work, and the uneasy relationship with his own transgender body, it dares to ask how anyone can continue in the face of loss."
I received this book as an ARC on Netgalley, however all opinions are my own.
So the reason I wanted to read this is genuinely because I saw it on Netgalley and the description sounded like it'd be something right up my street. Friends, I was right. This story was so incredibly beautiful, jarring, and heartbreaking. This is described as both a "literary fiction" and a "horror" on Goodreads, but this for sure falls more into the literary fiction catergory, as the horror elements of this story felt more sad than horrifying. Which also means we've finally found a literary fiction I like! This book truly was filled with a heartbreak that I don't think I was ready for. The way that this character dealt with their queerness, them being trans and their grief was both beautiful and devestating at the same time. I genuinely found myself tearing up throughout this book and just wanting to jump into the story and give our main character a hug. I would absolutely recommend this if you want something that's going to tear your heart out and put it back together again, but please note there are some triggering topics throughout so please look up the trigger warnings before you read this book.
I gave this book a 5/5 star rating on Goodreads!
This book comes out on the 17th September 2026!
What did you think of this book? Who were your favourite or least favourite characters? Do you have any books you'd recommend for me to read and do a review on? Please let me know down in the comments below!
Have a wonderful day!
Love, Doe!
No comments:
Post a Comment