slender and tenuous

The Lost Apothecary by Sara Penner

Genre: fiction/historical fiction

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Review: In 1791, Nella is a London apothecary who has made it her mission to help women get revenge on the men who hurt them.  She dispenses poisons and teaches women how to use them to kill the men who have shunned them, raped them, cheated on them, or otherwise done them harm.  Caroline is a present-day woman who has come to London for what was supposed to be a 10th anniversary trip with her husband.  Unfortunately, she's just found out that he's been cheating on her, so she's on her own, asking big questions about the path of her life.  Perhaps, if she'd lived in the 18th century, she would have been one of Nella's clients.  Instead, she finds one of Nella's vials while mudlarking by the Thames, and is determined to find out the story behind it.

What follows is a dual tale, tracing Nella's possible downfall as one of her poisons is possibly taken by the wrong person, and Caroline's quest to figure out the mystery of the vial and to make the hard decisions about the rest of her life.  Both Nella and Caroline are well-written characters, but their lives, both interior and exterior, weren't sketched out quite fully enough for me to understand some of their motivations.  Similarly, some of the evidence that Caroline uncovers about Nella felt much too slender to base some of her conclusions on, and the connection between one conclusion and another often felt tenuous.

Still, both Nella's and Caroline's stories are compelling, and together they create a momentum that propels the book forward quite nicely.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

real or imagined?

The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: For most of the "real" story of Agatha Christie's disappearance, or at least as much as is publically known, check out this article in the NYTimes Magazine from June 2019, which includes many clips from contemporaneous news articles.  For a fictionalized, but very believable, novel based on the same thing, check out Marie Benedict's latest offering.  Since Mrs. Christie refused to ever speak about what actually happenend, this may be as close as we get to the "truth".

Agatha and her husband take turns telling the story.  Agatha's chapters go back to the past, starting when she met her future husband and going up to the day she disappears.  His start with learning of her disappearance, and they alternate until she is "found" at a Yorkshire spa.  Her chapters are filled with a growing knowledge that the man she married is not the loving husband she thought he was and that perhaps her mother's advice to make him the absolute focus of her life to the exclusion of all else, even their daughter, is not all it's cracked up to be.  His chapters are threaded through with an overlying but vague threat that she made in a letter she left for him before she disappeared that require him to play his part in solving the "mystery".

Benedict tells this story capably, staying very close to the known facts.  So close that one wonders what the reader learns that the newspapers haven't already reported.  Of course, a novel takes us into the characters' heads in a way that journalism can't, but Benedict seems to have left her imagination by the wayside in inhabiting her characters.  Agatha matures throughout the book as she realizes that her marriage is not all that she hoped it would be, and becomes more resolute in her determination to shape her own destiny, but Mr. Christie is very one-dimensional throughout his chapters.  I suppose some characters are easier to write than others, but I hope that for Ms. Benedict's next book, she chooses a subject that alows her more free rein with her generous writing talents.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

delicious but not sweet

Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction/historical fiction

Review: Alice and her husband Nate have just left NYC for life in the suburbs.  Alice is very unsure about leaving the big city, but they think they're ready to start a family, and she's just left her high-powered PR job, and really she can't think of a reason to say no.  So off they go, moving in to Nellie's house.  Of course, Alice and Nellie will never meet, since Nellie's been dead for a year, but Alice will come to feel like she knows Nellie, after discovering a cache of letters and old magazines that Nellie left behind.

What follows is a not-unpredictable, but still satisfying, alternating of chapters.  Nellie and Alice are both keeping secrets from their husbands, but what are they and whose secrets will be found out and whose secrets may prove deadly?  The tension ramps up deliciously through the middle of the book, although Brown is a little heavy-handed with some of the clues.  Put together, the stories form two different, yet not altogether dissimilar looks at the inside of marriage, that though they may be 50+ years apart, may send that message that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.