How The Lost Apothecary Got Lost

The Lost Apothecary

By Sarah Penner

           ☕☕

"It's okay to change," I interrupted, "but it's not okay to hide, to bury parts of ourselves."

Synopsis

  The Lost Apothecary follows the story of three women; in the year 1791 we follow 12 year old Eliza and Ms Nella, and in our present time we follow the story of Caroline. As Eliza and Nella's story unfolds, Caroline makes a breakthrough historical discovery.

    Eliza and Nella meet in dark circumstances, Nella is a apothecarist who, in an act of revenge against the male gender as a whole, has decided to prescribe women with unfaithful or cruel spouses, brothers, fathers, a means to rid them from their lives through carefully disguised poisons. Little Eliza is a servant for Mrs Amwell who is unable to write letters as a result of an unknown illness causing hand tremors. Her husband, Mr Amwell is a disgusting man, he commonly assaults Eliza and when Mrs Amwell finds out she sends Eliza to Nella to get a poison concocted to kill him. After killing Mr Amwell, his wife leaves to Norfolk to grieve with her family and in the mean time Eliza stays with Nella, hoping to convince her of her use to her trade, seeing as Nella is also ill and suffers from severe hand tremors. Their relationship buds into an interesting mother-daughter relationship, though naïve Eliza only sees their budding connection as friendship.

    Back in our modern era, Caroline is a woman in pain. The recent discovery of her husband's unfaithfulness sends her to London to go on their planned anniversary trip alone and fate takes her to The River Thames where she discovers a small light blue vial with an engraving of a bear on it. She dives into a journey of both self discovery and historical mystery and she discovers the story behind the vial and dips her toe into the life that she could have had, had it not been for her manipulative and emotionally abusive husband.

My Review

    I can't decide how I feel about this book. On one hand I loved the story, even though it was hard for me to really get drawn into the plot. I think the problem is the way the split timeline style was executed. Its almost as if this whole book should've just been released as two novellas. One about the story of Eliza and Nella and maybe a bit more detail and backstory, and then a second novella with the story of Caroline and her struggles with her husband and her voyage of self discovery. You would read the story of Eliza and Nella first and then Caroline's. I think, if read back to back, that would've been a better way to execute this type of story. I found with a story as intense and interesting as Eliza and Nella's it made Caroline's story extremely irritating and underappreciated. It really brought the joke about "dreading that one character's perspective" way too real, and for the whole book to feel that way, for me, made is very chore-like to get through. But what's interesting is, as much as I disliked the interruptions in the two stories, I really enjoyed the historical research side of Caroline's plot line. I could've easily been immersed in the research with her and maybe even grown to be invested in her marital drama, but unfortunately it just got lost.

    I do want to address a slight trigger warning I haven't seen anyone (at least on GoodReads) address. Caroline's husband is EXTREMELY emotionally abusive and if you've never been in or witnessed an emotionally abusive relationship you might just think he's just a jerk character written to be hated. I see all the signs throughout Caroline's character development. Caroline is a history major with a strong passion for discovering new things about past people's lives and their fates, however Jerk James over here is extremely selfish and convinced her not to apply to Cambridge in pursuit of her dreams on the pretext of "creating a stable life for a child" but then when it came down to having said child he decided they needed to wait...and it has been 10 years that they waited, and days before the day of their 10th year of marriage Caroline discovers he had been unfaithful. Like are you kidding me?! It is very clearly evident of his abuse in the way that Caroline simply cannot think for herself. Even as she is enjoying herself in discovering the story behind the glass vial, she still thinks often about how James would react if she told him what she was doing, the way in the hotel she simply couldn't bring herself to even begin to tell him even further shows how used her is to his lack of interest in anything to do with her passions.

    When he convinced her to give up on her historic career, he says that she will never find a job with that degree, holding her future hopes of raising a child as bait to get his way.
James shows up in London unannounced with the intent to apologize, but he really ticked me off when his apology literally was, "It's done, We're having he transferred to another department, and I let her know that if she contacts me again, I'll inform Human Resources." Basically taking no responsibility of his actions and just saying "its over and done now. Lets just make up and move on." He's just such a horrible person it makes me genuinely mad and want to throw this book at his fictional head.

    I absolutely loved the story of Eliza and Nella. The friendship they build between desperate, naïve, vulnerable child and old, wise and cranky woman is just so touching and heartwarming, I couldn't stop reading it. I loved the sort of mother-daughter relationship they grow as they go through this interesting story and I found myself really wanting more. Sadly the book doesn't give you any more which really really sucks and is part of my reason for such a low review.

    Once I got into the climax of the book it was very difficult to put down, however there were times where I dreaded Caroline's chapters but I think I get that every time I read a book with split points of view. As much as I enjoyed this book, I found I only actually enjoyed the last half of it. The parts with Caroline and the British police really ticked me off, Caroline's selfishness with Eliza's story pisses me off because that is an AMAZING historical discovery that she (literally) threw away, however I do applaud her courage to take the leap of faith and apply to Cambridge with the sole intention of making Eliza and Nella's story the highlight of her research.

I guess I just wish Caroline was a more likable person. I feel like the relationship drama and the whole "intensity" (if you want to call it that) about whether or not she was pregnant really didn't have any prevalence to the story, or if it did maybe it was just to cause intensity but it was lost in the greater intensity of Eliza and Nella's story. I was more concerned with the cause of Eliza's bleeding then the reason for Caroline's lack of bleeding, seeing as Caroline was a grown woman and Eliza was twelve. I just wasn't grabbed by Caroline's story. As I keep saying, I honestly might have enjoyed the book much more without it.

Recommendation

    Its not a bad book to read, I kind of recommend it but only if your ready to get through the slow parts. I definitely DO NOT recommend it as a book to get you out of a slump.