The Love Remedy, by Elizabeth Everett

The colorful cover caught my eye, but it was the idea of a woman apothecary and a private investigator in Victorian England that made me request the ARC for this story.

Beware: very explicit misogyny; abortion; parents death as backstory; infant death; alcoholism; explicit sex; some kink; off page rape; allusions to xenophobia; racism.

The Love Remedy, by Elizabeth Everett

I am a sucker for a woman excelling in a man’s profession, especially in the past (it’s easier to swallow those “first woman whatever” a hundred years or three ago than this millennia), and in theory, Lucinda “Lucy” Peterson fits the bill. She’s twenty seven years old, single, and runs her family’s apothecary in early Victorian London.

Perfect, right? In theory, yes; the execution, however, didn’t entirely work for me. The world Ms Everett has her characters navigate is a mixture of historical facts and flights of fancy that didn’t entirely work for me. Coating dire circumstances with fluff tends to yank me out of the story; while I appreciate the value of humor to help alleviate existential dread, I prefer sarcasm to whimsy.

Here’s how the publisher sets up the book’s premise:

When a Victorian apothecary hires a stoic private investigator to protect her business, they learn there’s only one way to treat true love—with a happily ever after.

When Lucinda Peterson’s recently perfected formula for a salve to treat croup goes missing, she’s certain it’s only the latest in a line of misfortunes at the hands of a rival apothecary. Outraged and fearing financial ruin, Lucy turns to private investigator Jonathan Thorne for help. She just didn’t expect her champion to be so . . . grumpy?

A single father and an agent at Tierney & Co., Thorne accepts missions for a wide variety of employers—from the British government to wronged wives. None have intrigued him so much as the spirited Miss Peterson. As the two work side by side to unmask her scientific saboteur, Lucy slips ever so sweetly under Thorne’s battered armor, tempting him to abandon old promises.

With no shortage of suspects—from a hostile political group to an erstwhile suitor—Thorne’s investigation becomes a threat to all that Lucy holds dear. As the truth unravels around them the cure to their problems is clear: they must face the future together.

In 1843, it would not be unheard of for a father to leave his daughter a business, but perhaps not as common when there is also a son; however, after her parents died during a deadly outbreak of cholera, Mr Peterson’s will makes Lucinda, the second eldest child, the exclusive proprietor of Peterson’s Apothecary, essentially making her brother and sister her dependents.

In the nine years since, the siblings have settled into an informal division of responsibilities that keeps the business afloat, more or less. When not serving the public at the Apothecary during business hours, each sibling explores their own interests: Lucy develops formulas for new and more effective treatments and drugs for common ailments; Juliet is a de facto general medic who visits patients at home to diagnose and treat them; and David keeps the books and looks for investment opportunities to supplement their income.

And then disaster strikes, in the form of Duncan Ryder, the son of a rival apothecary, who seduces Lucy and makes off with her just-perfected formula for throat lozenges, just as she was at the point of seeking a patent. This is bad enough, but then she realizes that another of her formulas is missing, which she was also hoping to patent exclusively, thus ensuring some much needed stable income for the business.

As this is the outside of enough, Lucy heads for Tierney & Co., bookkeepers, in search of help to right this wrong.

Why a bookkeeping firm? Glad you asked.

This is the first book of the Damsels of Discovery series, which is linked to the previously published Secret Scientists of London trilogy by setting and a few secondary characters. While I haven’t read those books, the pertinent bits are helpfully explained by the characters in this book.

A wealthy widowed viscountess happens to be interested in science; since no public scientific society in Great Britain will accept women as members, she opens her own. Publicly, the Athena Retreat is a women’s salon; in reality, it’s a building in the gardens of Lady Violet’s London townhouse, housing a number of laboratories and workrooms for scientifically inclined women to advance their studies, conduct experiments, present their discoveries to each other, and so forth.

In the course of the first book of that first trilogy, members of Athena’s Retreat become familiar with Tierney & Co., ostensibly a bookkeeping firm; in actuality, a clandestine agency in service of the Crown, but which occasionally does some balancing of the scales for regular people as a public service.

Back to The Love Remedy.

It turns out that David Peterson is a disaster at keeping the books, and that, after a “very small explosion” at Athena’s Retreat a few weeks earlier, Lucy had brought all of her research papers to the Apothecary’s office and, essentially, just dumped them on top of the preexisting mess. How then, can she be sure that the croup salve formula is actually missing and not just buried amongst all the other papers tossed on the floor and piled on every other flat surface in the tiny room?

As Thorne and his young daughter conveniently need to move out of their current rooms, he agrees to do some actual bookkeeping for the Petersons in exchange of having use of the rooms on the third floor of the Peterson’s Apothecary building, which are, also conveniently, vacant; and he will investigate Duncan Ryder and his father while looking for the missing formula amongst the sea of papers in the office. Whether or not the croup salve formula has just been misplaced, it’s fairly clear that the lozenges formula was stolen by the scoundrel, and that is a wong that most definitely needs righting.

So far, this is the kind of premise I would love; the actual novel as written, however, didn’t totally work for me.

For one thing, the humor in the book doesn’t sit well; a number of scenes sprinkled in the book, clearly intented as comic relief, not only landed flat, but diminshed the rest of the book for me.

In one fairly ridiculous scene, as Lucy assures Thorne that only her, her brother, and the nefarious Duncan Ryder had access to the office and the mountains of papers therein, no less than six other characters barge in on different errands. After each interruption, Lucy earnestly swears that truly, no one but Duncan Ryder would have stolen her formula, because no one but trusted people enter the room–constantly, whether she’s there or not.

Shortly after that scene, in the same chapter, Lucy and Thorne discuss Katie Quinlavin, the very young “shopgirl”, and this pretty distressing bit of actual history comes up: children as young as seven were sent to work, full time, with their wages paid to their parents (think scullery maids or hall boys in posh houses, rent boys and girl prostitutes elsewhere).

“We must be quick about it or that chicken will find its way into the Quinlavins’ stew pot.” “Are they a particularly hungry family?” Thorne asked distractedly, shifting through piles. “They are a spectacularly hungry family, and Katie is the main source of food for them all.” Thorned looked up at that. “I’ve seen the books. She’s not paid enough to support a family.” Lucy sighed. “She wouldn’t be paid at all if her father had anything to do with it. Her mam fell sick after her fifth child–an ailment of the blood that leaves her spent. Her father, Joe, sent us Katie in exchange for the medicine they need.”

He’d been in London long enough not to look shocked that a family would pay their bills with a child’s labor. In most parts of London, children were sent to work as soon as they could follow directions, and many a girl was sold into circumstances much meaner than cleaning up after an apothecary. (Chapter 5)

Several serious issues crop up; for one, Lucy’s younger sister Juliet and her friend Mrs Sweet have set up a women’s clinic in the East End, providing what care they can, mostly to street prostitutes–including inducing abortions and handing out pregnancy preventatives. Beyond the moral disapproval of society and the condemnation of the Church (as decent women should not associate with fallen ones, who should, presumably, be left to die on the streets), this is dangerous work: there’s a political movement, that decries sex work–or indeed, any work women may perform beyond keeping house and bearing their husbands more children.

These men harass women involved in any business enterprise, having picketed Petersen’s Apothecary once already, as well accosting the patients at the women’s clinic, and Juliet herself; it’s clear that this harassment can quite easily devolve into outright violence at any moment, and indeed, it’s suspected the same group were behind the aforementioned fire at Athena’s Retreat.

Other complications include Sadie, Thorne’s daughter, who is the biracial illegitimate daughter of a demimondaine; something the respectable daughters of merchants and lower gentry with whom she associates at school are not allowed to let her forget.

Then there’s David, who never cared for science, and whose sense of inadequacy–lest we forget: their father passed him up in favor of Lucy, after all–and lack of purpose lead him into one financial disaster after another.

And of course, there’s the usual problem of men entitled, when not outright abusive, behavior towards women in the normal course of things: after a customer starts making a scene, making suggestive remarks to Lucy, and she defuses the situation by redirecting his attention through flattery, Thorne makes a slightly disparaging remark to Juliet about how her sister “knows how to please her male customers”.

“What is she supposed to do? What are any of us supposed to do when men become forward and belligerent? Toss them out of the shop? Then we earn reputations as shrews so men who come in are poorly disposed towards us, if they come in at all. … Whether we have earned it or not, women apothecaries are not considered gentlewomen who need protection from boisterous men. We are classed together with shopkeepers and barmaids.” (Chapter 7)

In general, the book works best when it allows the characters to be earnest, such as when Thorne grapples with the difficulties of raising a child girl as a single father.

“Do you think she means it?” Sadie asked. Once again, Thorne walked the precipice of parenthood, the dilemma of blanket reassurances versus the business of disentangling the worries and fears that lived in Sadie’s head. Why would Sadie doubt the genuineness of Lucy’s offer? What did he not see or understand? … Thorne found the experience of strategizing where a knife might strike a fatal blow in a fight analogous to figuring out which questions with his daughter might lead to information, and which led to tears.” (Chapter 11)

Lucy is about to collapse beneath the weight of responsibilities in her life; she feels guilty that her father’s will left David adrift. She feels guilty that by “letting herself be seduced” by a sleaze, she lost the means to secure her siblings’ financial future, endangering Juliet’s work at the women’s clinic; she worries about all the bills they can’t pay, the food and oil and coal that’s running out, and above all, she worries that perhaps there’s something wrong with her, because she feels “carnal desires” that respectable women don’t–witness her attraction to Thorne, a man she barely knows.

Therefore, it’s surely best for everyone that Lucy remain single and childless, avoiding men in any capacity but customers, as much as possible

Meanwhile, Thorne, a disowned younger son of a wealthy Baron, and once known as “the Gentleman Fighter”, used to be a hard-drinking partying man until Sadie’s mother died, at which time he stopped drinking; for the past several years, he has devoted his life to raising his daughter and to “atone for years of dissipated behavior”. As much as he is attracted to Lucy, he fears that giving in to sexual attraction would be a gateway to his other vices, and that he must therefore resist, for Sadie’s sake if nothing else.

The conflict between Lucy and Thorne is mostly internal, as their mutual attraction clashes with their life experiences, resulting in repeated misunderstandings, right up to the last chapter.

There is an important conversation between them about sex education, condoms, and the use of tonics to “bring forth the menses” (essentially a contraceptive, the same as “the morning after” pill), all of which are pertinent to their circumstances; Lucy is adamant that women should have choices for their own lives, while Thorne struggles to reconcile this fact with the knowledge that perhaps, had his mistress had access to such a tonic, Sadie wouldn’t exist.

In truth, there a number of important matters raised in the novel; issues that mattered in the 1800s as much as they matter today, from poverty to family ties, to bodily autonomy to demagoguery. The author’s framing, using a fictitious women’s society and so on, may make them easier to discuss and digest for some readers, but for me it had the effect of making the historic facts seem as false as the whimsical premise, showing the author’s hand too much.

I appreciated the inclusion of a trans masculine character, as well as an openly aknowledged bisexual character; the setting–characters on the fringes of society–allows me to just suspend disbelief enough about the acceptance the other characters show them, even with the whole “moral panic” brigade in the form of the infamous “Guardians of Domesticity.”

However, the bits of inappropriate humor, including the final scene, undermine a lot of the work I think the author wants to do with the story as a whole.

Finally, while I appreciated very much the use of dominance games in the sex scenes, as a means for Thorne to help Lucy concentrate on herself and let go, for a few precious moments, of all her worries and responsibilities, I confess I wasn’t altogether sold on the feelings between them.

The Love Remedy gets 7.75 out of 10