Spotlight & Giveaway: The Love Remedy by Elizabeth Everett

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Elizabeth Everett to HJ!

Hi Elizabeth and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Love Remedy!

Hello HJ Readers! So happy to be here.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

The Love Remedy is an early-Victorian set romantic comedy. It is the first in the Damsels of Discovery series and features a woman apothecary, Lucy, as our heroine. Someone has stolen her discovery – a salve that eases croup in babies – so she needs help in discovering who has taken it and how to get it back.

Enter our hero, Jonathan, a former prize-fighter, recovering alcoholic, and most recently a private investigator. He is raising his nine-year-old daughter on his own and agrees to take on Lucy’s case in exchange for living quarters in her building for himself and his daughter.

Thorne is a grump, and Lucy is always trying to make everyone, and everything turn out right – even at the expense of her own happiness. The more time they spend together, the hotter the attraction between them becomes until they give in to their desire and scorch the pages.

TLR has a few themes. One, an examination of how women in any time period are under pressure to put everyone else’s wellbeing and happiness before their own, and how they burn out from this pressure. Another theme is an examination of personal and spiritual change. Thorne has cut himself off from all pleasure in his attempt to avoid alcohol. TLR follows his progress as he learns which rules he can brea,k and which will save his life. Finally, TLR deals directly with a secondary character’s sexual assault, Lucy’s provision of reproductive health care, and Jonathan’s ambivalence with Lucy’s work. Serious themes run through the book, but plenty of humor and romance fill the pages as well.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“They do not allow gifts of cake for prisoners at Newgate,” Thorne informed Miss Peterson. Or rather, he informed her arse, which stuck out of a second-floor window above his head.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I enjoyed the historical research for this book. The Apothecaries Garden was begun back in the 1600s, founded by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. It contained hundreds of medicinal plants brought from all over the world as well as rocks and shrubs. Only members of the Society were allowed behind its tall walls. Today, the garden is known as the Chelsea Physic Garden. It wasn’t open to the public until 1983!
• Another fun fact is that all the cures mentioned in the book are taken from actual herbal remedies. For example, turmeric is still recommended to reduce inflammation in joints and oil of clove is still used to numb a toothache!

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

I have a fascination with competence as you might guess considering my fascination with women scientists. So does Lucy. It’s Thorne’s quiet certainty that most intrigues her. This is the opposite of how she feels most of the time – overwhelmed and uncertain. Thorne’s attraction to Lucy stems from her abundant empathy and devotion to the healing arts.
 

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

Writing a single father has been so rewarding. I laugh to myself every time Thorne tries to figure out what might make his daughter cry. Anyone who has raised a daughter can empathize, I think!

Two years ago, Thorne took an assignment to hunt down a devious and immoral killer, a man who might slit your throat to spare himself the time wasted by arguing a point. Thorne found the experience of strategizing where a knife might strike a fatal blow in a fight analogous to figuring out which questions with his daughter might lead to information, and which led to tears.
Girls were hard.

Readers should read this book….

If you enjoy intelligent heroines, enlightened heroes, and a grumpy/sunshine romance, this book is for you.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

Currently, I am working on revisions for the next book in the Damsels of Discovery series. This will be out sometime in 2025.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One print copy of THE LOVE REMEDY for a U.S. only winner.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: I’d love to know from readers if they enjoy the addition of children to the plot of a romance or if they would rather their romances be strictly PC (prior to children).

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Excerpt from The Love Remedy:

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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

A stoic private investigator finds himself employed by a devilishly bright apothecary whose business is brimming with tinctures to cure any ailment . . . except perhaps true love.

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 clear: they must face the future together.
Book Links: Amazon |
 
 

Meet 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.