Thursday, February 25, 2021

BLOG TOUR - The Lost Apothecary


DESCRIPTION
:

In this addictive and spectacularly imagined debut, 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. Pitched as Kate Morton meets The Miniaturist, The Lost Apothecary is a bold work of historical fiction with a rebellious twist that heralds the coming of an explosive new talent.

A forgotten history. A secret network of women. A legacy of poison and revenge. Welcome to The Lost Apothecary

Hidden in the depths of eighteenth-century London, a secret apothecary shop caters to an unusual kind of clientele. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. But the apothecary’s fate is jeopardized when her newest patron, a precocious twelve-year-old, makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo through the centuries.

Meanwhile in present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, running from her own demons. When she stumbles upon a clue to the unsolved apothecary murders that haunted London two hundred years ago, her life collides with the apothecary’s in a stunning twist of fate—and not everyone will survive.

With crackling suspense, unforgettable characters and searing insight, The Lost Apothecary is a subversive and intoxicating debut novel of secrets, vengeance and the remarkable ways women can save each other despite the barrier of time.


BUY LINKS:


MY THOUGHTS:
 
Title
:   The Lost Apothecary
Author:  Sarah Penner
Publisher:  Park Row
Genre:   Historical Fiction
Format:  Kindle and Audio ARC
Narrators:  Lorna Bennett, Lauren Anthony,
   Lauren Irwin
No. of Pages:   320    
Date of Publication:   March 2, 2021
My Rating:   5 Stars

In this fabulous debut novel, a female apothecary took her knowledge of medicine and drugs to a new level. She has developed quite a few poisons, all effective, to dispense them to women seeking to get away from men who have harmed them in one way or another. It is in the late 18th century and divorce was not always an option. Instead, as an extreme, it soon became known that there was another alternative, albeit a permanent one.

This story tells the tale of three women, Nella, the apothecary, her newest customer's maidservant, a very young woman of twelve, named Eliza Fanning, and present-day historian Caroline Parcewell. As this book was chosen for a blog tour and thus received in Kindle format, I was eager to read it. However, it also became available in audio format via NetGalley. Having the opportunity to listen to this via reading it created great advantage, as each of the females in this story had a narrator. Having multiple narrators made this book all that more intriguing.

As Nella created her poisons, she was building a rather unusual clientele. Of course, it was top secret as to what went on in Nella's shop. She did quite well until bright, over-eager Eliza came on the scene. Nella did not know why she was drawn to Eliza, but that truly could have been her undoing, as a series of events began to happen that came with unexpected consequences.

Where does Caroline come into the story? Well, she was wandering the banks of the River Thames in London and discovered a mysterious vial. The deeper Caroline investigates, the more she learns. She discovers events of over two hundred years ago that were tied into murders from way back them. 

There are rules, and if those rules are not followed, Nella will not help. When Eliza comes into the picture, Nella's carefully crafted livelihood comes into danger. When we balance Nella's and Eliza's drama along with Caroline's own drama in her personal and professional life, we are presented with an intriguing story that fills the reader with angst and nail-biting tension. The fact that this is a debut novel is fascinating to me, as well the expected upcoming translation into almost a dozen languages. I can't wait to see where this book goes and am honored to have had both the digital and audio copies available to me for review purposes.

Many thanks to Park Row and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.



Please enjoy the following excerpt:
Nella

February 3, 1791

She would come at daybreak—the woman whose letter I held in my hands, the woman whose name I did not yet know.

I knew neither her age nor where she lived. I did not know her rank in society nor the dark things of which she dreamed when night fell. She could be a victim or a transgressor. A new wife or a vengeful widow. A nursemaid or a courtesan.

But despite all that I did not know, I understood this: the woman knew exactly who she wanted dead.

I lifted the blush-colored paper, illuminated by the dying f lame of a single rush wick candle. I ran my fingers over the ink of her words, imagining what despair brought the woman to seek out someone like me. Not just an apothecary, but a murderer. A master of disguise.

Her request was simple and straightforward. For my mistress’s husband, with his breakfast. Daybreak, 4 Feb. At once, I drew to mind a middle-aged housemaid, called to do the bidding of her mistress. And with an instinct perfected over the last two decades, I knew immediately the remedy most suited to this request: a chicken egg laced with nux vomica.

The preparation would take mere minutes; the poison was within reach. But for a reason yet unknown to me, something about the letter left me unsettled. It was not the subtle, woodsy odor of the parchment or the way the lower left corner curled forward slightly, as though once damp with tears. Instead, the disquiet brewed inside of me. An intuitive understanding that something must be avoided.

But what unwritten warning could reside on a single sheet of parchment, shrouded beneath pen strokes? None at all, I assured myself; this letter was no omen. My troubling thoughts were merely the result of my fatigue—the hour was late—and the persistent discomfort in my joints.

I drew my attention to my calfskin register on the table in front of me. My precious register was a record of life and death; an inventory of the many women who sought potions from here, the darkest of apothecary shops.

In the front pages of my register, the ink was soft, written with a lighter hand, void of grief and resistance. These faded, worn entries belonged to my mother. This apothecary shop for women’s maladies, situated at 3 Back Alley, was hers long before it was mine.

On occasion I read her entries—23 Mar 1767, Mrs. R. Ranford, Yarrow Milfoil 15 dr. 3x—and the words evoked memories of her: the way her hair fell against the back of her neck as she ground the yarrow stem with the pestle, or the taut, papery skin of her hand as she plucked seeds from the flower’s head. But my mother had not disguised her shop behind a false wall, and she had not slipped her remedies into vessels of dark red wine. She’d had no need to hide. The tinctures she dispensed were meant only for good: soothing the raw, tender parts of a new mother, or bringing menses upon a barren wife. Thus, she filled her register pages with the most benign of herbal remedies. They would raise no suspicion.

On my register pages, I wrote things such as nettle and hyssop and amaranth, yes, but also remedies more sinister: nightshade and hellebore and arsenic. Beneath the ink strokes of my register hid betrayal, anguish…and dark secrets.

Secrets about the vigorous young man who suffered an ailing heart on the eve of his wedding, or how it came to pass that a healthy new father fell victim to a sudden fever. My register laid it all bare: these were not weak hearts and fevers at all, but thorn apple juice and nightshade slipped into wines and pies by cunning women whose names now stained my register.

Oh, but if only the register told my own secret, the truth about how this all began. For I had documented every victim in these pages, all but one: Frederick. The sharp, black lines of his name defaced only my sullen heart, my scarred womb.

I gently closed the register, for I had no use of it tonight, and returned my attention to the letter. What worried me so? The edge of the parchment continued to catch my eye, as though something crawled beneath it. And the longer I remained at my table, the more my belly ached and my fingers trembled. In the distance, beyond the walls of the shop, the bells on a carriage sounded frighteningly similar to the chains on a constable’s belt. But I assured myself that the bailiffs would not come tonight, just as they had not come for the last two decades. My shop, like my poisons, was too cleverly disguised. No man would find this place; it was buried deep behind a cupboard wall at the base of a twisted alleyway in the darkest depths of London.

I drew my eyes to the soot-stained wall that I had not the heart, nor the strength, to scrub clean. An empty bottle on a shelf caught my reflection. My eyes, once bright green like my mother’s, now held little life within them. My cheeks, too, once flushed with vitality, were sallow and sunken. I had the appearance of a ghost, much older than my forty-one years of age.

Tenderly, I began to rub the round bone in my left wrist, swollen with heat like a stone left in the fire and forgotten. The discomfort in my joints had crawled through my body for years; it had grown so severe, I lived not a waking hour without pain. Every poison I dispensed brought a new wave of it upon me; some evenings, my fingers were so distended and stiff, I felt sure the skin would split open and expose what lay underneath.

Killing and secret-keeping had done this to me. It had begun to rot me from the inside out, and something inside meant to tear me open.

At once, the air grew stagnant, and smoke began to curl into the low stone ceiling of my hidden room. The candle was nearly spent, and soon the laudanum drops would wrap me in their heavy warmth. Night had long ago fallen, and she would arrive in just a few hours: the woman whose name I would add to my register and whose mystery I would begin to unravel, no matter the unease it brewed inside of me.

Excerpted from The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner, Copyright © 2021 by Sarah Penner. Published by Park Row Books.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sarah Penner is the debut author of The Lost Apothecary, to be translated in eleven languages worldwide. She works full-time in finance and is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Women's Fiction Writers Association. She and her husband live in St. Petersburg, Florida, with their miniature dachshund, Zoe. To learn more, visit slpenner.com.

Social Links:
Author website: https://www.sarahpenner.com/
Facebook: @SarahPennerAuthor
Instagram: @sarah_penner_author
Twitter: @sl_penner

7 comments:

  1. Oh I like the sound of this book. How have I missed it? Great review.

    ReplyDelete
  2. wow!! this sounds so wonderful and that cover.. Robin, you are certainly adding to my tbr at a faster rate than i can manage..

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very intriguing premise and I'm dying to find out how the past and the future come together. Nice, nice review! Very enticing!

    ReplyDelete