The Love Remedy
(The Damsels of Discovery #1)
by Elizabeth Everett
When a Victorian apothecary hires a stoic private investigator to protect her business, they learn there’s only one way to treat true love—with a happily ever after.
When Lucinda Peterson’s recently perfected formula for a salve to treat croup goes missing, she’s certain it’s only the latest in a line of misfortunes at the hands of a rival apothecary. Outraged and fearing financial ruin, Lucy turns to private investigator Jonathan Thorne for help. She just didn’t expect her champion to be so . . . grumpy?
A single father and an agent at Tierney & Co., Thorne accepts missions for a wide variety of employers—from the British government to wronged wives. None have intrigued him so much as the spirited Miss Peterson. As the two work side by side to unmask her scientific saboteur, Lucy slips ever so sweetly under Thorne’s battered armor, tempting him to abandon old promises.
With no shortage of suspects—from a hostile political group to an erstwhile suitor—Thorne’s investigation becomes a threat to all that Lucy holds dear. As the truth unravels around them the cure to their problems is they must face the future together.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
One thing Thorne learned early on in fatherhood was that lying to your child was the key to domestic harmony. Carrots were what dwarves ate to give them the ability to see in dark mines, and if you ate yours before they cooled, you, too, might be able to spot gemstones in the dark. Baths were necessary because they washed away any leftover bad dreams from the night before. If you didn’t go to sleep, you wouldn’t grow big enough to ride a unicorn. Unicorns lived in Cheshire and only let little girls who ate their vegetables ride them.
Sadie had been the one to precipitate his proposal to Mrs. Merkle, although not as enthusiastically as she’d advocated for him to marry Miss Highland, the milliner (she had a nice smile and Sadie would always have new bonnets), or their neighbor Mrs. Downwith (septuagenarian she might be, but she enjoyed baking biscuits and had a lapdog Sadie found charming).
The commotion amid the congregation this morning rivaled the time Mrs. Inglewood fell so fast asleep that she’d toppled off her pew and woke screaming that the devil had finally come to get her.
My Review:
I rarely read this genre but I would more often if they were all as cleverly penned and compelling a tale as this one. Elizabeth Everett has mad skills and I am her newest acolyte. I fell into her poignant and heart squeezing arrangements of words that were brilliantly peppered with amusing lashing of wit and wry humor as well as insightful observations. Her characters were uniquely drawn while each was deeply flawed yet endearing, hard-working, and mostly well- intended. I adored them while also wanting to give them a thump or two with my Kindle.
Elizabeth Everett lives in upstate New York with her family. She likes going for long walks or (very) short runs to nearby sites that figure prominently in the history of civil rights and women’s suffrage. Her series is inspired by her admiration for rule breakers and her belief in the power of love to change the world.