Author: Sarah Penner

#BookReview: The Amalfi Curse by Sarah Penner

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
#BookReview: The Amalfi Curse by Sarah PennerThe Amalfi Curse by Sarah Penner
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical romance, magical realism, romantic suspense, timeslip fiction, witches
Pages: 336
Published by Park Row Books on April 29, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

“Sarah Penner transported me to the sea-swept cliffs of Positano and introduced me to characters I’ll never forget. A magical read!”—Emilia Hart, New York Times bestselling author of The Sirens
Powerful witchcraft. A hunt for sunken treasure. Forbidden love on the high seas. Beware the Amalfi Curse…
Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work?
As Haven searches for her father’s sunken treasure, she begins to unearth a centuries-old tale of ancient sorcery and one woman’s quest to save her lover and her village by using the legendary art of stregheria, a magical ability to harness the ocean. Could this magic be behind Positano’s latest calamities? Haven must unravel the Amalfi Curse before the region is destroyed forever…
Against the dazzling backdrop of the Amalfi Coast, this bewitching novel shimmers with mystery, romance and the untamed magic of the sea. 

My Review:

I picked this up for two reasons. First, because I enjoyed both of the author’s previous books, The Lost Apothecary and The London Séance Society. It seemed like she was on an upward trajectory as far as my reading was concerned as I liked the second book a bit better than the first, which perhaps I should have paid a bit more attention to.

Which led directly to my picking up her short story, The Conjurer’s Wife, earlier this year. While I didn’t like that quite as much as the novels, I did have a great time with the audiobook AND it contained a bit of a teaser for THIS book. It takes place at the same time as the historical part of The Amalfi Curse, so when the villain of that piece cast rather covetous eyes on a painting of the red-haired witches of Positano and it was clear that what he coveted was not the women as sexual objects but rather as vessels of power that he was sure he could use – for all the terrible definitions of that word – it left me intrigued about this book.

As it turns out, while the villainous conjurer of that short story does not make an appearance in The Amalfi Curse, villainous men of exactly his type absolutely do – and in both timelines. He’d have fit right in and that’s NOT a compliment.

This story, as is true for the author’s debut novel (Apothecary) but not her second (Séance), is a timeslip story. It tells its story of both danger and romance in the present AND in a distant-but-not-too-distant past. In this case, now and two centuries ago, linked by location and danger and inheritance – in that order.

In the present, nautical archaeologist Haven Ambrose and her team of all-female colleagues are converging on Positano for a project that will make ALL of their careers. The Amalfi coast off Positano has been a ships’ graveyard for centuries, to the point where the wrecks are so jumbled together that it’s been impossible to make sense of the puzzle for archaeological purposes – until now. Well, hopefully now, as this is the first major test of the cutting edge scanning equipment they will be utilizing.

Haven also has a personal reason for pursuing this project. Her father’s last dive was among the wrecks off Positano, and he discovered a cache of treasure that he was never able to bring up. On his deathbed, Haven promised that she’d bring that treasure up – not for the money – but for the discovery itself and the knowledge that would come with it.

It’s that treasure that links Haven’s story in the present to Mari’s trials and tribulations in 1821. Mari was the leader of the ‘streghe del mare di Positano’, the witches of Positano who protected their fishing village from the vicissitudes of the sea and the villains who sailed upon her with the witchcraft born in their blood.

The stories are linked, not directly through that shared blood, but rather through the ship whose wreck Haven plans to explore and the treasure she expects to find. But just as there are villains in Mari’s 19th century who have nefarious plans to take the witches’ power for themselves, there are villains in the 21st who intend to steal Haven’s work and her prize right out from under her.

And in both timelines, those villains have hidden in plain sight for years among the women’s own families.

Unexpectedly, The Amalfi Curse turned out to be a story about karma. And has often been said, she’s a bitch. But this time, at least, she’s on the side of females just like herself with power and the ability to use it – even if it’s not the same power at all.

Escape Rating B-: I enjoyed The London Séance Society rather a lot, so I came into this with high hopes that should have been a bit tempered by remembering that Séance was not a timeslip story. Because this is.

A LOT happens in both timelines in this story, and the parallels between Mari’s story and Haven’s come in at surprisingly different angles – but that’s also part of the reason for that B- grade. It takes each side of this story time to build and reach out towards the other, so the first half of the story moves slowly.

I adored the research angle of much of Haven’s side of the story – as I always love a good research quest done well – which this was. At the same time, the villainous nature of the villains in Haven’s story was screamingly obvious from the very beginning, to the point where it was never a question of ‘if’ – only ‘when’ and how much sabotage they would do to her in the process.

Mari’s betrayal, at least, came from an angle I wasn’t expecting. After all, one expects rapacious pirates to be, well, rapacious pirates. One does not expect a member of one’s family to be in league with said rapacious pirates. So that was definitely as big a surprise to me as it was to Mari.

While the way that each side of the story gathers towards its climax and the reveal of how they connect, the romances in the different timelines were a bit uneven. Mari’s romance with Holmes forms the backbone of the story, because we see it through Holmes’ surviving diary and it’s beautifully romantic even as he tells it. Howsomever and in contrast, Haven’s romance with Enzo in the present was a bit insta-love to the point where one could wonder if it was magically induced – and it could have been.

Overall, there were a lot of fascinating elements to this story, and once it gets past the halfway point it really takes off in both timelines. But for this reader, I had high hopes that didn’t quite get met, and it didn’t feel like it was the right book at the right time. Your reading mileage – even measured in nautical miles – may vary.

#AudioBookReview: The Conjurer’s Wife by Sarah Penner

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews> Short Story Review
#AudioBookReview: The Conjurer’s Wife by Sarah PennerThe Conjurer's Wife by Sarah Penner
Narrator: Helen Laser
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fantasy, historical fiction, magical realism
Pages: 40
Length: 1 hour and 2 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on January 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

In nineteenth-century Venice, a young woman’s marriage to an illusionist hides secrets that go deeper than his spectacular acts. The stage is set for transformation in a mesmerizing short story by the New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Apothecary.
In 1820s Venice, world-renowned magician Oscar Van Hoff confounds sold-out crowds with his astounding manifestations. Even his beautiful wife and assistant, Olivia, is mystified. Her job is to smile and recite her lines—onstage and in society. But the thankless routine is bringing out her rebellious side. Then, on the eve of what promises to be Oscar’s greatest performance yet, Olivia uncovers a secret with the power to shatter all her husband’s illusions. Now the finale belongs to her.

My Review:

The story begins simply, and seems a bit familiar even if, or especially because of its historical setting.

We open with, and looking through the eyes of, the titular conjurer’s wife, Olivia Van Hoff, standing on the stage of an early 19th century Venice theater, waiting for the curtain to rise on her husband’s masterful magical show filled with absolutely breathtaking illusions that no one can penetrate. Not even Olivia, who is not only his wife but also his assistant both onstage and off.

But Oscar is a man who demands that everything be ‘just so’, both on the stage and in their private life. Olivia is standing, knowingly, willfully and rebelliously, three whole entire inches off her mark when the curtain rises.

She can tell that Oscar is incensed. Olivia, however, is practically drunk on the tiny flame of rebellion kindled in her heart. Just as Olivia learns that defiance can be intoxicating, we learn that Oscar is an abusive bastard, and that Olivia has a form of amnesia so all-encompassing that she remembers nothing before their hasty marriage only one year previously.

And just as Olivia has a whole lot of sneaking suspicions about her life before the terrible accident that resulted in her amnesia, the mysteriously masterful nature of Oscar’s illusion, and the suspicious coincidence of timing between her accident and his rise to fame – so do we.

Olivia isn’t necessarily searching for the truth, or even, specifically, a way out of her marriage and the life in the spotlight that she has no desire for. Or, truthfully, for Oscar himself. But that does not mean she does not know precisely what to do with the truth when she finds it.

Escape Rating B: I initially picked this up because it looked like a quick read on a cloudy day, and because I liked two of the author’s previous books, The Lost Apothecary and The London Séance Society. At only 40 pages I read it over lunch, thought it was interesting but not very deep – which is fair for a 40 page story – and moved on with my reading.

(The Conjurer’s Wife also reminded me more than a bit of The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers, which is also a story about magic, performing under the spotlights, and secrets. Lots and lots of secrets.)

Then I picked up an eARC of the author’s upcoming book, The Amalfi Curse. Again, because I enjoyed The London Séance Society and The Lost Apothecary, and not just for their utterly gorgeous covers. But the blurb for The Amalfi Curse seemed like it was teasing me – specifically about something mentioned in The Conjurer’s Wife. Which led to the discovery that the audio of that short story was available through Amazon Prime, and that it would take me about an hour to listen to.

Which brings me to this review, because the story was even more interesting the second time around and the narrator, Helen Laser, did a terrific job as Olivia Van Hoff. Also, the story absolutely does tease something about the ‘witches of Positano’, Oscar’s potential and presumably unrealized ambitions in their direction, as well as the Amalfi coast if not (yet) The Amalfi Curse, making me all the more eager for the book coming at the end of April.

Review: The London Seance Society by Sarah Penner

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The London Seance Society by Sarah PennerThe London Séance Society by Sarah Penner
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, magical realism
Pages: 352
Published by Park Row on March 7, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From the author of the sensational bestseller The Lost Apothecary comes a spellbinding tale about two daring women who hunt for truth and justice in the perilous art of conjuring the dead.
1873. At an abandoned château on the outskirts of Paris, a dark séance is about to take place, led by acclaimed spiritualist Vaudeline D’Allaire. Known worldwide for her talent in conjuring the spirits of murder victims to ascertain the identities of the people who killed them, she is highly sought after by widows and investigators alike.
Lenna Wickes has come to Paris to find answers about her sister’s death, but to do so, she must embrace the unknown and overcome her own logic-driven bias against the occult. When Vaudeline is beckoned to England to solve a high-profile murder, Lenna accompanies her as an understudy. But as the women team up with the powerful men of London’s exclusive Séance Society to solve the mystery, they begin to suspect that they are not merely out to solve a crime, but perhaps entangled in one themselves…

My Review:

Whether one believes that death is merely the gateway to the next great adventure, or that one is ascends to heaven or descends to hell, or that it is an end to all things – or holds some other belief altogether – we don’t actually KNOW in the empirical, scientific, provable and replicable sense. All that is certain is that death is inevitable – even more so than taxes in spite of the cliché.

The desire to know may be universal. When this story takes place in the 1870s the belief that it was possible to communicate with the dead, to reach behind that veil and either send or receive a message from those who had left us behind, was at its height. And also, as this book tells, its all too human, fallible and corruptible depths.

In other words, spiritualism was a very big – and very profitable deal in the 1870s. Victoria and the Victorian Era she gave her name to practically fetishized death. In the Re-United States there were few if any households who had not lost a friend or a loved one in the recent war. Plenty of people were looking for comfort or solace or simply closure.

No matter how prevalent beliefs in the spirit world may have been in the 1870s, later investigations proved that most of what was purported to be proof was actually proof of fraud and the gullibility of grieving people to believe what they needed to believe to get through their grief – or not, as the case might be.

But what if some of those beliefs were not misplaced? What if some mediums really could reach beyond the veil to bring true messages from the dead?

Lenna Wickes begins the story only believing in things she can see and hear and touch. But in her desperation to discover the truth about her sister’s murder, she turns to noted spiritualist Vaudeline D’Allaire to learn the tricks of her trade in the hopes of learning that truth – or at least of expiating her own guilt that their last conversation was yet another in an endless series of arguments.

What she finds instead is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and a fish that has rotted from the head down and threatens to engulf her and the woman she loves. Unless it blows up in her face.

Escape Rating A: I picked up The London Séance Society because I enjoyed the author’s debut novel, The Lost Apothecary, and wanted to see if her second book lived up to the first. Which it not only did, but was just that little bit better.

Her previous novel combined “a bit of a time slip story with historical fiction, a soupcon of magical realism and just a touch of mystery.” The London Séance Society skipped the timeslip, but told an even more fascinating tale of historical fiction with a much larger portion of magical realism and a heaping helping of mystery.

The magical realism is the part of the story that is both lampshaded and played straight at the same time – which keeps both the reader and the protagonist guessing from beginning to end.

Lenna Wickes represents the 21st century reader who does not believe in anything she can’t see or touch. Before her sister’s death, she collected fossils. But her sister Evie, who seemed to be a firm believer in spiritualism, claimed that those fossils were a kind of proof that it was possible to reach beyond the veil. That those preserved insects in amber, or the impressions of long-dead leaves and creatures in rock was just another way of reaching beyond death.

The sisters – as sisters do – strongly disagreed and were in disagreement when Evie was murdered.

Lenna dives into the world of spiritualism in an attempt to either communicate with her sister or figure out why she died, or both. She doesn’t believe, but she does feel that there might be something there. It’s also entirely possible that what she feels is considerably more related to her teacher than what she is being taught.

Whether Lenna believes or not, whether Vaudeline D’Allaire is a true medium or a fraud, it’s clear from the beginning that there is something rotten at The London Séance Society, a rich and powerful gentlemen’s club that prides itself on providing séances and other proofs of spiritualism.

Evie Wickes and the Society’s President were murdered on the same night – but not in the same place. It makes no sense to either Lenna or Vaudeline that the deaths could possibly be related. Until coincidences start piling up, and it becomes clear that someone high up in the Society was involved in something dirty that needed to be covered up. By any means necessary.

What made the story so compelling was the way that at first it seems like the identity of the rotter is obvious, to the point where one starts to believe one has it all figured out long before Lenna reaches that point. But there’s a niggle that it can’t possibly be that simple, and that’s what keeps one – or at least kept me – turning pages well into the night.

Because the more Lenna digs into the Society, the more dirt comes up, and the more the obvious conclusion looks to be hiding another, more sinister conclusion that is less obvious and even more unthinkable than the first terrible possibility. To the point where just when you think you can see the final twist coming – the story has yet one more turn to surprise you with.

The Lost Apothecary was very, very good. The London Séance Society is even better. I can’t wait to see what this author comes up with next!

TLC
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Review: The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Lost Apothecary by Sarah PennerThe Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Pages: 320
Published by Park Row on March 2, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them—setting three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course
Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman.
Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register.
One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose—selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register.
In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the river Thames, she can’t resist investigating, only to realize she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murders” that haunted London over two centuries ago. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate—and not everyone will survive.

My Review:

The Lost Apothecary combines a bit of a time slip story with historical fiction, a soupcon of magical realism and just a touch of mystery, then wraps it all up, not in a nice tidy bow, but rather in a potpourri of savory herbs, pungent spices and well-hidden poisons.

It begins in the present, with 30-something Caroline Parcewell alone in London on a trip that was supposed to have been a celebration of her tenth wedding anniversary.

But Caroline discovered that her husband was an unfaithful arsehole just before they were supposed to leave Ohio for England, and Caroline decided to use the non-refundable airline tickets and hotel booking as an opportunity to get some space and take some time to figure out whether to resign herself to the safe, secure and boring life she has or to figure out what of her own independent hopes and dreams she still has a shot at fulfilling.

And at the tips of her loose ends she unearths the tip of a mystery that sets her back on the road to the person she used to be, before she let her husband talk her into being the person that he needs to further his career.

So Caroline undertakes a bit of a historical treasure hunt. The tiny glass vial she has found could be nothing. Or it might just possibly be the key to unlocking a historical mystery. Or two. Or three.

In her search for a late 18th century female apothecary and serial killer, she has a chance to uncover a hidden chapter of history. Along the way she might also find the person she was meant to be.

Or she might be prosecuted for murder.

Escape Rating A-: If you crossed The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane with In the Garden of Spite you might get something in the neighborhood of The Lost Apothecary. And I mean that in all its strangeness, all its depth, all its death, and definitely all its sense of women helping women and women making sure that other women are, if not celebrated, at least remembered.

Even in Caroline Parcewell’s 21st century framing story, it’s still about women’s skills, women’s magic, and women helping each other stand up in the face of men who want to keep them down at every turn and by any means available.

There are two stories in The Lost Apothecary. Caroline’s 21st century story and Nella and Eliza’s late 18th century story. Both are about women doing their best to help other women, although Nella and Eliza are the helpers in their tale, while Caroline is the helpee in hers, and both end with them learning to help themselves and to get by, as they say, with a little help from their friends.

There isn’t a lot of mystery in Caroline’s own story. Her husband is a selfish, self-centered, manipulative douchecanoe and many of the events in Caroline’s story relate to his douchiness in one way or another.

In other words, I loved her and I hated him and there weren’t a lot of surprises in that part of the story.

But this is also Caroline’s journey of self-discovery – and there were plenty of fascinating things happening along that particular way. One of the things that this story does well is the way that it portrays the joy and the compulsion of historical research. While it is seldom as easy as it turns out to be for Caroline, the way that she gets sucked into her deep dive into the past and her need to keep hunting no matter what was very well done. The reader absolutely gets sucked in right alongside her.

That the friend she makes on her journey of discovery is a librarian at the British Library was absolutely the best icing on the cake for this reader.

The story of the apothecary herself, or herselves as it turns out, Nella and Eliza, was a different kind of fascinating, but I didn’t find their story – at least not until the end – as compelling as Caroline’s. The idea that a female apothecary was helping women poison their husbands was sensational on many levels, but their internal dialog, the beliefs that drove them, while they felt true to the times in which they lived at the same time felt like a bit of a strain from my 21st century perspective. It’s not that it didn’t work, because it definitely did, but more that I wanted to reach through the book and shake both of them. Which, come to think of it, says a lot about how compelling I found their characters.

But the way that the two stories wrapped themselves together was utterly marvelous. I am absolutely astonished that this is the author’s debut novel – and I can’t wait to see where she takes me next!