The Lost Apothecary

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

“To me, the allure of history lay in the minutiae of life long ago, the untold secrets of ordinary people.” 

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I absolutely loved this book! When a friend of mine recommended I check this book out I realized I was hesitant to give it a read because I judged the book by its cover (potion bottle, apothecary) and assumed it was just another story filed under the fantasy genre. Boy was I wrong!

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This story begins in the dark, rat-infested, hidden spaces of eighteenth-century London where a secret apothecary and its shopkeeper Nella sells well-disguised poisons to women across the city. These particular poisons are used specifically against the oppressive men in their lives. 

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We’re then introduced to a twelve-year-old girl named Eliza Fanning who visits Nella's shop to retrieve an order for nux vomica (I won't give away why) and who expresses an interest in becoming an apothecary apprentice.

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The book unfolds with a dual timeline, present day and the years between 1791-1816. Three women of three different ages tell the story-Nella, Eliza and Caroline. I felt the two parallel timelines blended together seamlessly. 

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The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner was a dark, sinister and magical tale into the secrets of the apothecary shop and the quest of Caroline to discover her true passions through the treasures of the past. The storytelling is very immersive-you can almost feel your feet getting stuck in the mud of the Thames and the smell of poisons made of beetles and whatever brew is steaming on the fire. 

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“The curse of magick, they believe, is that for every reward, there is a great loss. For every spell that goes right, there is something else—in the real, natural world—that goes terribly wrong.”