#penner

Rating: 1

Re-Read Factor: No

Genre: historical fiction

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

Allow me to offer an alternative blurb to this flimsical story.

The Lost Apothecary follows Caroline Parcewell who discovers that her husband has been cheating on her by snooping on his phone. Instead of addressing the issue, she suspends the predicament by accomplishing one of her lifetime dreams-- visiting London (paid for entirely by her parents; she also doesn't work for a dime). On an antique excursion, she discovers a strange vial with an unknown etching and works to uncover its secrets . . . with no build up . . . by a convenient Google search (first page result for something as vague as a "bear vial," never have I ever).

Meanwhile, in 1791, 12-year old Eliza Fanning enters Nella's apothecary shop to collect a poison to kill her mistress' husband-- a pedophile and abuser of young girls. She succeeds in her mission and follow Nella as her tutee. Many young women come and go in the shop to kill the men who've wronged them, but one slip up in their operations, and both women would meet certain death and end the means for women to be independent of their oppressors. Fin.

For a premise so promising, the book was incredibly disappointing. The plot didn't really progress, and any progression that it did make was conveniently addressed one and done. The story was told from 3 perspectives and cut from past to present day in a split narrative form-- Nella, Eliza, and Caroline. I honestly believe that Caroline's POV should have been cut entirely (and thus the entire modern narrative) because it truly detracted from the book at large. Parcewell never struggled throughout the book's entirety and whatever she said was usual one complaint about this and that after another (e.g. her finding Gaynor, Gaynor conveniently being the tour guide's daughter). She's incredibly one-sided. If she doesn't get her way, she throws tantrums and lashes her anger at the others and the world. Her dream of attending Cambridge is cut short because she has to be the submissive wife of a man at a "Big 4" firm and absolutely must throw away a dreams for his to succeed.

Furthermore, killing people on word alone is a horrible form of "due process," and Nella should have learned her lesson from Frederick's betrayal. Yet she still decided to take on one-sided testaments and dispense poisons to kill people entirely unknown to her. Penner gives women a bad rep, and it is clear that she has a superficial understanding of the feminist movement. Penner clearly believes that all women should get pregnant as evidenced by all (I kid you not) of the female character's desire to get pregnant to trap their husbands into staying married to them, to "make their marriages better," and thensome. "Spoiler alert." Having a baby isn't a cure for an already souring marriage.

And oh dear. Lady Clarence of Carter Lane. For a character supposedly so evil as to expose Nella's mission to supposedly better women across 18th century England, she was absolutely uncunning. To have failed her mission of killing her husband's mistress only to find out that she had actually killed him, and now she can't has his babies. Boo. Hoo.

But allow her to make things right all of a sudden and out of nowhere. Her character was so confusing, and it seemed like I was reading two separate individuals than one.

Eliza suddenly being alive via "magick" was random. There was no buildup to the existence of magick other than a few words thrown here and there. What was it? How did it work? Where did it come from? No answers. Just up to the reader's imagination.

Onto James. He was simply not the apologetic cheating husband he was made out to be. He was poorly developed. Added nothing more to the plot or anyone else's character development than a psychopathic decision to swallow eucalyptus oil for attention, and even when Caroline dumped him, it was implied that she might have taken him back sometime in the future. An ode to feminists? Questionable.

Finally, Gaynor was simply a means to tie loose ends. Need new information to magically appear out of nowhere? She's your gal. Random entries about the past would just pop up in Caroline's lap, and it certainly stood to showcase Caroline's lack of development and also Penner's stance on historians in what is shelved as historical fiction. They're just there for information dumps and add absolutely nothing else to the plot.