Early Praise for THE LOVE REMEDY
“The Love Remedy firmly establishes Everett as a trailblazer and truth-teller whose daring historical fiction lights the way forward.”
—Joanna Lowell, author of The Duke Undone
“Elizabeth Everett perfectly balances a swoon-worthy romance with sharp, insightful social commentary that is all-too relevant today. Readers eager for strong, unapologetic heroines fighting for bodily autonomy should pick this up. I loved every word!”
—Emily Sullivan, author of The Hellion and The Hero
About the Book
What is a lady’s formula for love? Bring together one brilliant noblewoman and an enigmatic bodyguard. Mix in a measure of danger and attraction. Heat over the warmth of humor and friendship, and the result is more than simple chemistry—it’s elemental.
Lady Violet Hughes is keeping secrets. First, she founded London’s first social club for ladies to provide sanctuary for England’s most brilliant female scientists. Second, she is using her genius on a clandestine mission for the Crown. But the biggest secret of all? Her feelings for protection officer Arthur Kneland.
The most guarded of men, Kneland learned the hard way to put duty first. But the more time spent in the company of Violet and the eccentric club members, the more his best intentions go up in flames. Literally.
When a shadowy threat infiltrates Violet’s laboratories, endangering her life and her work, scientist and bodyguard will find all their theories put to the test—and learn that the most important discoveries are those of the heart.
About the Author
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.
THE LOVE REMEDY by Elizabeth Everett
Berkley Romance Trade Original | March 19, 2024
Excerpt:
Lucy’s guilt had been squeezing the breath from her lungs for weeks.
On the counter, slightly dented from having been crushed in her fist, then thrown to the ground and stepped on, then heaved against the wall, sat a grimy little tin. Affixed to the top was a label with the all-too-familiar initials RSA. Rider and Son Apothecary.
Rider and Son. The latter being the primary reason for this very worst of days.
The longer she stared at the tin, the less Lucy felt the strain of responsibility for running Peterson’s Apothecary and keeping her siblings housed and fed. Beneath the initials were printed the words Rider’s Lozenges. The ever-present exhaustion that had weighed her down moments ago began to dissipate at the sight of the smaller print beneath, which read “exclusive.” The more she stared, the more her guilt subsided beneath a wave of anger that coursed through her blood. “Exclusive patented formula for the relief of putrid throats.”
Exclusive patented formula.
The anger simmered and simmered the longer she stared until it reached a boil and turned to rage.
Grabbing her paletot from the coatrack and a random bonnet that may or may not have matched, Lucy stormed out of the shop, slamming the door behind her with a vengeance that was less impressive when she had to turn around the next second to lock it.
Exclusive patent.
The words burned in her brain, and she clenched her hands into fists.
One warm summer afternoon four months ago, Lucy had been so tired, she’d stopped to sit on a park bench and had closed her eyes. Only for a minute or two, but long enough for a young gentleman passing by to notice and be concerned enough for her safety to inquire as to her well-being.
While the brief rest had been involuntary, remaining on the bench and striking up a conversation with the handsome stranger was her choice, and a terrible one at that. Lucy had allowed Duncan Rider to walk her home, not questioning the coincidence that the son of her father’s rival had been the one to find her vulnerable and offer his protection was down to her own stupidity.
Now, as Lucy barreled down the rotting walkways of Calthorpe Street, she barely registered the admiring glances from the gentlemen walking in the opposite direction or the sudden appearance of the wan November sun as it poked through the gray clouds of autumn.
Instead, her head was filled with memories so excruciating they jabbed at her chest like heated needles, rousing feelings of shame alongside her resentment.
Such as the next time she’d seen Duncan, when he appeared during a busy day at the apothecary with a pretty nosegay of violets. He’d smelled like barley water and soap, a combination so simple and appealing it had scrambled her brains and left her giddy as a goose.
Or the memory of how their kisses had unfolded in the back rooms of the apothecary, turning from delightfully sweet to something much more carnal. How kisses had proceeded to touches, and from there even more, and how she’d believed it a harbinger of what would come once they married.
A shout ripped Lucy’s attention back to the present, and she jerked back from the road, missing the broad side of a carriage by inches. The driver called out curses at her over his shoulder, but they bounced off her and scattered across the muddied street as Lucy turned the corner onto Gray’s Inn Road.
Halfway through a row of weathered stone buildings, almost invisible unless one knew what to look for, a discreet brass plaque to the left of a blackened oak door read:
Tierney & Co., Bookkeeping Services
Lucy took a deep breath, pulling the dirty brown beginnings of a London fog into her lungs and expelling it along with the remorse and shame that accompanied her memory of Duncan holding her handwritten formula for a new kind of throat lozenge she’d worked two years to perfect.
“I’ll just test it out for you, shall I?” he’d said, eyes roaming the page. Duncan and his father had long searched for a throat lozenge remedy that tasted as good as it worked. Might Duncan be tempted to impress his father with her lozenge? His lips curled up on one side as he read, and Lucy recalled the slight shadow of foreboding moving across the candlelight in the back storeroom where they carried out their affair.
“I don’t know,” she’d hedged.
Too late. He’d folded the formula and distracted her with kisses.
“I’ve more space and materials at my disposal. I know you think this is ready to sell, but isn’t it better that we take the time to make sure?”
It might have been exhaustion that weakened Lucy just enough that she took advantage of an offer to help shoulder some of her burdens. However, the decision to let Duncan Rider walk out of Peterson’s Apothecary with a formula that was worth a fortune was due not to her sleepless nights, but to a weakness in her character that allowed her to believe a man when he told her he loved her.
Now, four months later, somehow Duncan had again betrayed her.
Having already lost the lozenge formula to Duncan’s avaricious grasp, Lucy had been horrified to find a second formula missing. She’d come up with a salve for treating babies’ croup, a remedy even more profitable than the lozenges. What parent wouldn’t pay through the nose to calm a croupy baby?
Lucy was certain that Duncan must have found out about her work and stolen both the formula and ingredient list for the salve.
This time, Lucy would not dissolve into tears and swear never to love again. This time, she was going eviscerate her rival and get her formula back.
Then she would swear never to love again.
Excerpted from The Love Remedy by Elizabeth Everett Copyright © 2024 by Elizabeth Everett. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved.
Tracy’s Review:
The Love Remedy by Elizabeth Everett
Tracy’s rating: 3 of 5 stars
Series: The Damsels of Discovery, #1
Release Date: March 19, 2024
Lucinda “Lucy” Peterson and her siblings run their family’s apothecary shop, Lucy and her sister Juliet both trained as apothecaries and are members of the guild, but her sister’s true calling is working at a clinic in the slums, and their brother isn’t really interested in the shop, leaving Lucy to keep the shop running as well as her father’s legacy. Lucy is overworked and is fighting to keep her business going, it isn’t easy, especially in a male-controlled world, she and her sister are the only female apothecaries in London – possibly England and face more than their share of discrimination and censure, as they are willing to help women with reproductive issues. Not only does she have the “Guardians” breathing down her neck, but she has already lost one potential money-maker by trusting her lover, Duncan Rider (a rival apothecary owner) with her formula, he took her formulation and patented it, cutting her out completely. So when another formula goes missing and she is convinced that Duncan has stolen it and hires an agent from Tierney & Co to find out if Duncan is in fact the thief. She is determined not to fall in love again, but she didn’t count on being attracted to the man, or liking his young daughter so much.
Jonathan “Thorne” Thornwood, aka Jon Thorne, the Gentleman Fighter is the son of a Baron who was cut off by his family when he refused to send Sadie, his daughter away, as she is the result of Thorne’s relationship with Genevieve, a courtesan of mixed race. Thorne never planned on marrying Genny, but he won’t turn his back on his daughter, so when Genny died, Thorne cleaned up his act, stopped boxing, drinking and has sworn off women – especially beautiful women. Which is why he wants no part of Lucy’s job – as he finds her too tempting. But more than anything, he wants Sadie to have a normal childhood and is considering marriage to his landlady, but when the landlady inherits a cottage on the beach and sells the boardinghouse, he needs a new place to live, and taking Lucy’s job will include an apartment, so he will just have to control his desire – just like he has for the last seven years. He will find out who stole Lucy’s formula, return it to her and then go marry his former landlady – easy-peasy, right?
I wanted to love this story, I enjoyed the previous series and thought this series was going to pick up where that series ended and it sort of does, but this book hit different. The story starts out well, but honestly, I felt like both Lucy and Thorne were emotionally unavailable and had no chemistry – lust, yes, but no true connection and no epilogue. Both had been done wrong by their lovers, and both had plans to marry other people, even while they shared a physical relationship – that is a romance killer for me. Then there was the fact that for a smart woman, Lucy was pretty stupid, she was duped by a nitwit after having an affair and even after that, would have married him. Then there is the fact that the thief gets off scot-free – UGH! I am not sure where this series is going, this book focuses on women’s reproductive rights, discrimination and touches on racial and class discrimination, making the book feel more like historical women’s fiction with sex, rather than historical romance (IMO). The writing is great, the book is paced well and the characters were likable, and I am sure a lot of readers will enjoy this book, but it just wasn’t what I was hoping for in a spinoff series.
*I am voluntarily leaving a review for an eARC that I requested and was provided to me by the publisher. All opinions in this review are my own.*
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