The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I really had no idea what to expect from this book. It was picked by one of my Cocktail Hour co-hosts as a replacement for one 2 of the 3 of us couldn’t get into at all so it was happening one way or another. And since I had a few more days on my Scribd subscription, what did I have to lose?

The Lost Apothecary covers two time-frames and three points of view: two from 1791 and one modern day. I’ll say right off that I started out with the ebook version and was enjoying it but ended up switching to the audio version because I had lots of time during the day because of reporting… I wish I had more eyeball time with this one because the thing that I liked the least was the narrators. You might not have a problem with that but it was irritating for me. I eventually got over it but it did take a while.

Overall, I loved the idea of the apothecary and enjoyed Caroline’s research during the modern era to uncover the mystery. It was fun and I wanted her to find the truth. Nella and Eliza deserved to be remembered. The way it all worked out was satisfying for the most part. I’m not going to lie, I had a really hard time believing the reasoning behind keeping the ledger but, as my wife loves to remind me, it’s pretend…