Sarah Penner’s new book The Lost Apothecary is very new, appearing just last month. It has received many favorable reviews from the public and is the debut novel from Penner. I picked it up hoping I’d find a new author I enjoy.
After finishing, I’m thinking that all the people who gave The Lost Apothecary enthusiastic reviews must’ve read a different book than I did.
The Hook of The Lost Apothecary
The story splits between the present and 1790s Great Britain. I don’t have a problem with that. The modern character, Caroline, goes to London because she just found her husband had had an affair. She finds a glass vial while mudlarking. Yeah, mudlarking was a new one to me, too. It involves looking through the mud of the Thames River hoping to find old stuff. Is this what someone hoping to forget a cheating spouse would do? Well, I’ve never had to forget a cheating spouse myself, but I’m thinking no way. It’s pretty tame as far as inciting incidents go.
The vial Caroline finds, of course, belonged to the 18th century apothecary whose story is the other half of the book. This is the connection between the present and past. It’s not a horrible hook, I guess, but again, not a real dramatic way to draw in the reader.
In any case, the rest of the book alternates between 1791 and the present. Caroline gradually finds stuff out about the apothecary while dealing with her husband, who follows her to London. I thought the husband was the best-drawn character of the book. He’s a real manipulative SOB, but that made him one of the few characters in The Lost Apothecary who truly raised the tension.
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Why You Should Avoid The Lost Apothecary
The list could be long. Caroline never gained my sympathy because she was unoriginal and pedantic. How many times has the woman-escaping-from-cheating-husband plot line been used now? She also had the unfortunate tendency to ask rhetorical questions as the hook to get you to continue to the next chapter. I suppose these were meant to be profound, but I found them terribly mundane. What do you do when you’ve been married ten years but fear you aren’t living the life you hoped for? There are, I don’t know, maybe 100,000,000 Americans asking themselves that question daily?
The 1790s characters are badly flawed as well. Nella, the apothecary, poisons men. Women show up at her shop, drop her a letter describing who they want to kill, and Nella provides the proper toxins for the murder. Never once does she investigate if the men deserve it. She takes each request and fulfills it like clockwork. That’s supposed to be okay just because a man did her wrong once? Sorry, that isn’t a sympathetic character. Nella is a murderess. I see no moral ambiguity. Just a killer.
Eliza, the twelve-year-old who wants to be Nella’s apprentice, is a little better. Except that she often thinks and speaks like an adult. Writing characters who are that age is hard. I struggled to do it in My Australian Adventure and The World Traveler precisely because adult brains work so differently from the brains of children. But Eliza’s portrayal isn’t especially close.
Rating for the Book
The book could’ve been okay, I suppose, if Caroline had a semi-original motive for what she was doing and Nella had a semi-moral motive for what she was doing. Add to that plenty of passive voice constructions (how did both author and editor miss those?) and some unrealistic character portrayals, and I simply didn’t care for this book.
Part of the problem, I suspect, is the author’s background. I looked at her website, and she appears a reasonably young woman happily married with no children. It calls into question the psychology of writing characters struggling with infidelity (Caroline) or looking back on a lifetime of regrets and heartache (Nella). If she’d had children herself, perhaps Eliza would’ve felt more convincing, too. (The website also had its share of grammar errors, not to mention more colons than Taylor Swift has breakup songs.) I’m not a believer that authors can only write what they know personally. That’s really limiting. But the author’s own life may not have helped in this case.
Oh, and lest I forget, The Lost Apothecary should’ve dispensed with the magic nonsense at the end. Using magic in historical fiction is like how the Star Wars franchise uses the Force—a blanket remedy convenient for covering up plot holes.
So, I’ll score 4 of 10 on this book. I’d imagine the author will get plenty more contracts for more books because this one seems to be doing well, but it’ll be up to someone else to pass judgment on those because I think I’ll skip them.
You can find my other recent book reviews here:
King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
Deacon King Kong by James McBride
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