A review by bklassen
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

Did not finish book. Stopped at 54%.

 

I tried. Really, I tried. I gave this book past 50% and it wasn’t getting better. Based on reviews, I’m glad I stopped where I did because it didn’t improve past that. 

This book’s main theme is: PREGNANCY. All the main characters (all of which are female, which is nice, but all of them are obsessed with pregnancy, which is less nice. I suppose the 12-year-old isn’t, but she thinks periods are caused by ghosts, so yay?) revolve around pregnancy. Either they want to be pregnant or regret not having been pregnant. 

Note: This is not to shame anyone who dreams of becoming pregnant. Everyone has different life goals, and if you want to be a mother, all power to you! It’s a terribly difficult job and often feels thankless (or so I’ve heard), but it’s still a very important job. I just personally don’t want to ever be pregnant and don’t really care to read about it. It’s fine if it’s in the periphery, but as a main component of a book? Yeahhhhh, no. 

Beyond the theme that I just don’t connect with, the book wasn’t terribly well written and everyone feels rather flat. Oh, and the main character in the modern time is an idiot. She has a bad case of “not like other girls” – you spent time reading in the library instead of sitting in cafes? How special you are! You decided to do some base level investigation or source finding? You must be a historian! At that point in the book, my eyes rolled out of my head and straight to Panama. 

The frustrating thing is that she can’t seem to parse out that you can have hobbies. Your favorite thing doesn’t have to be and often shouldn’t be your job. You can be an accountant by day and read 18th century literature by candlelight for all I care, but you can’t blame other people for choosing a dependable, steady job and not going into mountains of debt getting your masters in a niche or obscure topic that really doesn’t benefit many people. In an ideal world, yes. But sorry, that’s not the way the world works, and your husband isn’t a jerk for suggesting that you get a “real job” and leave old books to a hobby. He is a jerk in other ways! But not for being practical. 

I also felt like I had to keep fact checking the historical elements. Like, was it called pearled barley in the 18th century, or was it just barley? Did they actually use certain expressions. Little things kept popping up that set off a little sensor in my head that the author didn’t actually research the time period, but just wanted the set dressing of a past time/place and got lazy. And it annoyed me. 

Anyway, this book was not very interesting and the characters are flat and it’s just not very good. If you would consider your taste even close to discerning, I wouldn’t waste your time.