To be published 02/03/2021…
Living in 18th century London Nella, like her mother before her, runs an apothecary shop exclusively for women. Like her mother before her, she helps them with women’s ailments and offers a safe space for women from all walks of life. Unlike her mother, Nella also sells poisons. Having been betrayed herself, Nella is the perfect sympathiser to the plights of all the betrayed women of London. She helps them gain revenge, safety, a future. Her only rule? Nella will only kill men. No women are to be harmed as a result of her poison. In this way she ensures that her mother’s legacy of helping women remains untarnished. Until one customer and one mistake and one final death.
In the modern day London Caroline is on holiday. It was booked to celebrate her wedding anniversary, but her husband is not with her. She’d left him behind in America, unable to look him in the face after discovering his infidelity. Unsure how to spend her time alone, Caroline is drawn into joining a group of mudlarkers in the river Thames. There she discovers a glass apothecary bottle and slowly begins to unravel the scandalously dangerous history that it holds. And the secrets that hide within.
Nella, the main character of this book is a murderer. There is never any doubt of this fact. In fact, most of the characters that we meet in 18th century London are complicit in murder, one way or the other. Yet I very rarely felt any twinges of judgement, hatred or disgust towards them. All the normal emotions one might feel towards a murderer are just impossible to pin on the bitter but caring character of Nella. Or the sweet and naïve Eliza. Or Eliza’s kind and long-suffering mistress. Certainly this book is centred around an intriguing and complicated moral compass.
In comparison to Nella’s life, Caroline’s story is quite tame. It has its ups and downs, but doesn’t quite meet the same level of excitement and intrigue. Yet the small ways that the two stories mirror one another create an eerie level of interest that add an unnerving edge to everything that Caroline experiences. Her emotions in particular hold a heavy weight when compared to Nella’s experiences and where they led her.
By the end of the book I was fully invested in both women’s lives and rooting for the outcomes that they deserved. The ending of Caroline’s story was definitely satisfying, exactly the outcome I had hoped for. However Nella’s story ended in a much less cohesive way. Hints are given and assumptions made and the final moments of her narrative are viewed through a hallucinatory lens. The outcome of her story is laid out in the final pages as though it is a puzzle that still needs to be put together. In a way this confused uncertainty was much more satisfying than the neat conclusions of Caroline’s story; the mystery of it kept Nella and Eliza alive in my head long after I turned the final page.
Escape to the Bookshelf 