Review: The Love Remedy by Elizabeth Everett

The Love Remedy by Elizabeth Everett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC of this book via Netgalley and the Berkley Besties program, all opinions are my own.

This was a super fun Victorian historical romance following a female apothecary and the private investigator she hires to recover something she's lost.  Lucy Peterson is a rare female apothecary, who runs the family business with her brother and sister.  She made the mistake of sharing her formula for a revolutionary new medicine with a fellow apothecary whom she fancied, and his shop is now thriving while Peterson's is barely scraping by.  Lucy is certain this dastardly fellow has stolen another formula that can save her business, but she doesn't have proof.  Enter Jonathan Thorne.  Thorne is a agent for a firm that takes on cases for wronged women, and he has been hired under the guise of keeping Lucy's books.  While he sorts her papers and gets her finances in order, Thorne is also gathering information from the locals in the hopes he might find who took the missing formula.

This tackled alot of subjects: women in medicine and STEM, women's healthcare, religion, sex education, class, race, and so much more.  In a time where propriety reined supreme, Lucy is left to inherit the family business, when women did not work and train as apothecaries and in medicine.  Lucy wants to run the shop while her sister who is also an apothecary wants to treat patients, their brother wants nothing to do with either.  This leaves Lucy feeling isolated, frustrated, and abandoned.  I was frustrated with Lucy because she never communicates that to her siblings, she has a hard time communicating in general.  She has lots of big feelings, but has a hard time asking for help and expressing her wants and needs.  That paired with the betrayal of her former beau and her failing business she is a bit overwhelmed.  She is actually pretty realistic.  Thorne is a man of few words, but he has lots of rules that he lives by, I liked that Lucy challenged him on his standards and rules and made him take off his rose tinted glasses.  He is a single dad so he is trying his best to be a good father and role model for his delightful daughter, but in turn he is missing out on 

Overall this was a fun, slow burn romance.  I really enjoyed the characters as they navigated society and each other.  Lucy and Thorne's attraction does eventually lead to some spicy scenes.  I thought they were pretty tame compared to other spicy romances I've read, however it does fit the time period and writing style of the book.  

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