The Apothecary's Daughter

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Empece con muchas ganas este libro esperando solamente que la historia fuera como la primera que leí de esta autora pero no fue así. Nuevamente caímos en lo mismo. Ray Flowers (DI) inherits a house and moves in while recuperating from an horrific injury. While he decides whether to continue his police career, he meets several new people and is intrigued by journals left behind. Through these books and subsequent research he becomes intrinsically linked to the apothecary’s daughter, Kitty, who lived in this house in the 17th century. Hopping between eras, there are two mysteries to be solved. La hija del boticario” es un libro autoconclusivo, que narra la historia de Lilly, quien trabaja con su padre en la botica familiar, ubicada en un pequeño pueblo inglés en el siglo XIX.

I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, at how much I enjoyed the book. The narrative voice, sense of setting and historical period are all strong, and the religious aspects (while occasionally heavy-handed) only once threaten to overwhelm the main story. Most importantly, however, the protagonist is both intelligent and dynamic enough to hold our attention throughout the story; and (longtime readers will know this is my most frequent complaint) the author understands "show, don't tell". That last concept, especially, is a problem common to authors who have far more published work than Ms. Klassen, and I heartily congratulate her for overcoming it. Each chapter starts with a quote of various pharmaceutical and apothecary means as well as a few others and it really sets the scene. It is something she also used in her first book, and I truly believe that it adds an incredible important element to the way her story is told. This book is divided up into sections that works quite well. It is a long book and fabulously so, I did not want it to end. Ella no estaba bien que le gustara un tipo sino cuatro! ella por todos sentía algo. Por dios era molesto como ellos andaban alrededor como si ella fuera la miel y ellos las abejas (parecía que en ese pueblo no había más mujeres). Ninguno de los cuatro hombres fue interesante o con peso fueron más bien simplones y personajes secundarios.My favorite thing about this story is that you didn't know who Lily was going to end up with. Often the reader knows fairly early who will end up together and the rest of the story is about their ups and downs. I liked that this was Lily's story and she wasn't sure who she wanted until the very end. I also like how you see Lily's growth and maturity throughout the book as well as the ending. It is very satisfying and not all tired up with a ' happily ever after' bow-it isn't tragic but it is realistic.

A cryptic message about her father sent her home after about a year, and things again changed for Lily. Susannah was an amazing character. She never let the ill fate that followed her keep her down for long. She was a strong woman with great intelligence who was often degraded just for being a woman. At the beginning of the story we find her situation similar to Cinderella's. Her weak willed father has fallen in lust with a much younger woman, Arabella, whose only objective was to find a suitable new home for her children with enough income to keep her in the dresses she desires. You couldn't blame Arabella for being the way she was, as during that era a woman needed a man to survive; as the sexist nature of society wouldn't allow women to have a carreer of their own.Lily fit quite well in London's social scene and had a number of men showing her interest, but love was what she really wanted. For a quality match she was instructed that her father's occupation, and the fact that her mother had abandoned the family years before, needed to be kept secret. Lily, being an honest person, couldn't lie when the question was finally asked, much to her aunt's dismay. Suddenly her options weren't as solid. This scarred, overweight ex-policeman is not your typical detective character and is more human for that. In limbo, he is pulled into the search for who hurt him - more for the answer to why they did it. Ray does seem a mite naive for a copper, but the pace is good and it’s always handy to have another character (George) with ‘access all’ skills/rights that circumvent the tedium of information gathering and the flow-halting political shenanigans of the police system at play. As Lilly toils in her father’s apothecary, preparing herbs and remedies by rote, she is haunted by memories of her mother’s disappearance. Villagers whisper the tale, but her father refuses to discuss it. All the while, she dreams of the world beyond—of travel and adventure and romance. Susannah is an intelligent young woman in her twenties who assists her father in his pharmacy. But the date is 1665 so he's actually called an apothecary, creating herbal remedies from scratch; moreoever this is an era when women did not, generally, do work of this kind. However, London is in the grip of the bubonic plague. So apothecaries must work overtime to produce nosegays - supposedly to ward off evil humours - as well as plague preventative medicine, herbs for poultices, and so on.

Otro tema que me termino de tumbar el interés fue la protagonista y sus CUATRO INTERESES AMOROSOS!!!The inspirational/religious aspects of this story aren't too heavy (in fact, they felt a little like an afterthought to me), but there is some discussion of prayer and God's role in our lives. The beginnings of the book kept me very much interested in the story, and I did feel it was well written. There is Lilly, the heroine, her father Charles and her brother Charlie. Her father took on an apprentice, Francis Baylor. It was all a happy arrangement, until her mother's relatives came to visit and whisked Lilly to London. There are some quirky POV shifts in this book. It's 98% written in a third-person POV for Lilly, but the beginning and end scenes are, for reasons known only to Klassen, written in 1st person POV. But what was really odd was when when, after the 50% mark, we suddenly have a handful of scenes written from the POV of a couple of Lilly's suitors, just randomly dropped into the text here and there. If you're going to switch POVs, do it more often, or not at all.

Summary: An exciting and realistic debut novel set in the era of the bubonic plague in London. An apothecary's daughter learns about life and love, and the reader gains a great deal of knowledge, quite painlessly, about the privations of the 17th century. And then by the end, in the one same paragraph, Francis is sometimes Francis and then Mr. Baylor and then Francis and then Baylor and Mr. Baylor. All during narration, not dialogue. What gives?Blending romance, family drama, and fascinating historical detail, The Apothecary’s Daughter is a novel to savor and share. And finally in the grand finale, the title of "Apothecary's Daughter" was given to Mary, Lilly's half-sister, who died. And somehow, when never once had Lily shown interest in Francis (or, same level of confused feelings towards 3 of her suitors) that she decides that he is for her and she pines for him.