The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Schwartz, Dana. Anatomy: A Love Story. Wednesday Books, 2021.

The novel begins with two teenagers digging up a body in a graveyard. They are attacked, and while one escapes, the other does not. The attackers slice his arm, and take a drop of his blood to put into a vial. The two teenagers names are Davey and Munroe.

The protagonist of the novel, Hazel Sinnett, talks with her cousin, Bernard Almont, about a science demonstration he has seen in which a magician-scientist was able to make a severed head blink with electricity. The scientist also demonstrates being able to make a dead frog’s limbs move. Hazel attempts to recreate the experiment, but Bernard is not interested.

Hazel learns about an upcoming demonstration of an amputation and dissection at the Royal Anatomists’ Society. Bernard will not come with and help her get in, so she decides to sneak in on her own. When she gets there, she realizes the doors have been locked before she can sneak in. A nearby teenage boy helps her sneak in undetected and view the demonstration from underneath the risers. She watches as the doctor administers something that puts the amputation victim to sleep, so he does not feel the pain.

Throughout the novel, Hazel’s mother, Lady Sinnett, becomes concerned that Bernard has not yet proposed to Hazel. Their marriage had been determined when the two teenagers were young children. It is important for Hazel’s future because Percy, Hazel’s younger brother, will inherit everything as the son, and she will not inherit anything. Bernard will one day be viscount, so Hazel will be well-positioned in society. Eventually, though, Lady Sinnett leaves Edinburgh for Bath with Percy, because she is worried he, the heir, will become infected and die of Roman Fever, the same disease that killed Hazel’s older brother. Hazel is not at risk from Roman Fever because she already contracted it and healed, leaving her immune.

Hazel enrolls in a class taught by Dr. Beecham to prepare her to take the Royal Physician’s Exam. She dresses as a boy to enroll and excels in the class, but eventually she is discovered, and is kicked out of the class. She employs the help of a local resurrection boy, Jack Currer, to help her get dead bodies from the kirkyard to dissect. The two fall in love in the process.

Local resurrection boys have gone missing, and as Hazel dissects bodies from the graveyard, she notices that some are missing organs. On the day she is about to take the Physician’s Examination, she notices someone pushing a wheelchair to the Anatomists’ Society, and she peeks in. She learns that Dr. Beecham is taking poor people and stealing their organs to transplant into the bodies of wealthy people. She confronts him, but as she does, Jack is wheeled in for transplant. Dr. Beecham plans to take his heart. The two are able to overcome the captors and escape.

Hazel nurses Jack back to health, but Bernard untruthfully tells the constable that Jack has been killing the unfortunate victims. He is sentenced to hanging. Hazel realizes that Dr. Beecham is actually his grandfather and has taken an immortality tonic. He uses part of this tonic to help his patients’ transplants work. He gives her the tonic for herself, and she offers it to Jack. She does not know if he will take it, but after he is hung, she receives a letter from the Continent saying someone is waiting for her there, most likely Jack. Hazel has already given up her betrothal, and with it, her future in the aristocracy once her father dies, and Percy inherits their castle.