The Alchemist’s Daughter by Mary Lawrence [ARC]

Bianca is a chemiste (NOT an Alchemist) and is fascinated by science and creating new medicines. When her best friend Jolyn dies right in front of her, Bianca is determined to figure out the cause. She wants justice for her friend, but Bianca also needs to clear her name since she has suddenly become suspect number one.

It looks like this author might want to make Bianca Goddard the main character in a mystery series and I wouldn’t be opposed to the idea. Bianca is a great character because she’s a little unconventional for the time period. She’s smart and doesn’t particularly want a man to have to take care of all the time. She’s more interested in her work than love. I liked that about her. That being said, the mystery that she was involved in was more than a little confusing. At any one time I wasn’t quite sure what mystery we were trying to solve. There was the main one: who murdered Jolyn? But then I felt like there were a lot of other questions that were never answered and I was just kind of confused a lot of the time.

The book is written from multiple different viewpoints, but one overarching narrator. I enjoyed this, but at the same time I didn’t. I liked it because it made it so that the reader had the most complete set of information. We had all of the facts while each of the characters only had a couple of them at a time. I didn’t like the different viewpoints for the same reason. I liked knowing everything that was going on, but I also didn’t. There’s something fun and suspenseful about solving the mystery along with the main character. We have all of the same facts that they do and are trying to connect the dots with them.

Overall, I didn’t particularly care for this book. I think I read on the Amazon page that it’s set in sixteenth century England, which is interesting and I think the author portrayed it really well. However, I don’t want to read about two different girls hiking up their skirts to relieve themselves in alleyways. Just…why? Maybe the author’s trying to convey something about the time period? I don’t know. It just seemed unnecessary and gross. There were just things like that throughout the book that made living in that time period seem really uncomfortable. While all of these things may be true, do they add to the book? Do they add to the plot? If you’re still interested, the book comes out April 28th and you can pre-order it HERE.

Overall Rating: 2
Violence: Heavy. The author was not shy about describing gore either (but nothing TOO explicit).
Sexual Content: Moderate. A lot of talk about prostitutes/prostitution.
Language: Mild
Smoking/Drinking: Moderate

Note: I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.