Title: THE LOST APOTHECARY
Author: Sarah Penner
Publisher: Legend Press
Read: June 2021
Expected publication: out now
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟.25
Book Description:
A female apothecary secretly
dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them—setting
three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course.Rule #1: The
poison must never be used to harm another woman.
Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the
apothecary’s register.
One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a
hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected
healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose—selling
well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men
in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious
twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a
string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the
many women whose names are written in her register.
In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth
wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s
infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the river Thames, she
can’t resist investigating, only to realize she’s found a link to the unsolved
“apothecary murders” that haunted London over two centuries ago. As she deepens
her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning
twist of fate—and not everyone will survive.
My musings:
Historical novels with two separate timelines have
become very popular. They usually go something like this: someone in the
present discovers an old photo / diary / artefact which links to a past mystery
/ tragedy / secret, and both timelines run parallel as our modern day
protagonist finds the clues. I have a kind of love / hate relationship to this
kind of story, because I always feel drawn to the premise of an old secret
being discovered, and yet on the other hand invariable find one timeline more
compelling than the other. #readerproblems
As someone who would dig for Roman
coins as a child and dream of becoming an archaeologist in the vein of a 1930’s
expedition to Egypt with a panama hat and a camel train, I was instantly
excited by the premise of mudlarking. Who wouldn’t be excited to find an old
treasure? Therefore, when could-have-been historian Caroline Parcewell finds an
old blue glass vial in Thames river mud on her holiday in London, she is
intrigued. With only a small etching of a bear in the glass as a clue, she
embarks on a search for more information about the origins of her find.
In the second timeline, in 1791, we
are introduced to Nella, who owns a hidden apothecary shop inherited from her
mother. But unlike her mother, Nella has expanded her knowledge of plants and
remedies to supplying poisons to women who need to free themselves of a man,
for whatever reason. She does so by her own code of ethics, which includes that
no woman must ever be harmed by her poisons. When twelve-year old Eliza turns
up in her shop to pick up a poison meant for her mistress’s philandering
husband, both Nella as well as Eliza’s lives are about to change forever ...
As soon as I met Nella, I was hooked
on her story. She was both mysterious as well as damaged, a strong female
defying all the norms of her time, a wise woman who had strayed off the path of
a “normal” moral compass through her own tragic experiences. Here was a
character who could really drive a story! I also loved the information about
the herbal potions and poisons Nella dispenses to her clients, which made me
furiously google “poisonous plants in your own backyard”. I now live in fear of
some neighbour dropping dead and my search history getting scrutinised by
police!
Unfortunately, I soon found my
interest waning in Caroline’s story. I became bored of her marital problems,
her lamentations about wanting a baby but not wanting a baby, and about her
failed aspirations of following her dream to study history at Cambridge. Her
“research” into the little glass vial she had found sounded so easy that surely
every one of us would be able to unearth a hidden underground city just by
trowelling a garden bed and googling a few historical facts. I was tempted to
skip through the present timeline just to get back to the “real” story, that of
Nella and Eliza, which was so much more intriguing.
In the end, I felt that the whole
book could easily have done without Caroline’s timeline, and those pages used
to flesh out the peripheral characters in Nella’s story instead. I wanted more
Gothic vibes, I wanted to hate the villains and understand Nella’s true
motivations on a much deeper level. I think that the problem was that Caroline
had no real emotional involvement in unearthing the past secret her little vial
held hidden, which made both timelines run parallel rather than connect in any
meaningful way, such as – for example – an old family secret would have done.
Instead, it takes her only a couple of days to solve a mystery that has been
missed by every single person in London for the last 200 years. I just didn’t
buy it.
Summary:
In summary, THE LOST APOTHECARY offered both the
highs and lows I often experience in historical fiction – a potentially 5 star
timeline diluted by one I felt woefully uninvested in. However, I loved the way
the author brought Nella to life for me, and eagerly followed her story. I
think that the book will appeal to readers who enjoy a pleasant, entertaining
story that is neither too dark or too mentally taxing but which still offers an
intriguing past mystery to explore.
Thank
you to Netgalley and Legend Press for the
free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide
an honest review.
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