Reading Recommendations - November recap

Patricia Leslie
1 day ago
6 min read

It’s time for my Reading Recommendations - November recap

Another month of great reading! I post my weekly reading recs on Facebook and Instagram first so follow me there to see them as they go live. To receive this recap before anyone else, subscribe to my monthly newsletter where you'll find a link to my recap plus an exclusive, subscribers only, article.

Bookcover for The Lost Apothecary. Cover is dark purple with a border of colourful flowers. Booktitle is in centre of a sketch of potion bottle. — *The Lost Apothecary* by Sarah Penner

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I recently flew down to Tasmania for a holiday and The Lost Apothecary was my airport purchase for the flight. What a lucky pick it was too as I quite enjoyed the read and am inspired to delve into some historical fiction research of my own.

I’m starting with what I liked most about the story; mud-larking, abandoned buildings with hidden rooms, old books, and investigating forgotten stories. Hooked from the start!

Author, Penney has given us a well written and researched dual timeline novel featuring contemporary character, Caroline Parcewell, confronting her husband’s betrayal and her dissatisfaction with where her life had taken her. In London, originally to celebrate her tenth wedding anniversary and now to sort out her life, she decides to give mud larking a go. She discovers a mysterious glass vial with the symbol of a bear scratched into it. The discovery of the vial leads her to rediscover her own passion for history.

The vial was once owned by a woman named Nella who ran an apothecary in the late 1700s. Nella brews and sells poisons to desperate women who come to her seeking her special assistance to deal with the oppressive men in their lives. A chance meeting with the young Eliza Fanning, on a mission to secure a poison on behalf of her mistress, changes the course of both their lives.

Caroline, intrigued with her discovery starts researching and is drawn further into the story of the mysterious apothecary. Meanwhile, her errant husband unexpectedly arrives in London in an attempt to patch things up….

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner was first published in 2021 and is a New York Times bestseller.

Check out Sarah's latest release at sarahpenner.com or search her out on Instagram.

Book cover for "The Winter People" hovering over a creepy misty forest of dead trees. The book is in shades of grey with dead branches extending from the title. In the centres is a misty/snowy farmhouse with tall trees in the background. — *The Winter People* by Jennifer McMahon

The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Winter People was published in 2015 by Anchor Books so an oldy but a goody. The decade between then and now has not dated this story one iota. McMahon certainly has a knack for pulling her readers into the ominous atmosphere of her storytelling. It has horror, mystery and history.

It has tones of Stephen King’s ‘Pet Sematary”, which I found so creepy (back in the day) that I never finished it reading it. Bringing people (or animals) back from the dead is the stuff of nightmares.

The official blurb starts with, “West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter.”

Ghosts, superstitions, and the supernatural simmer away under the surface of an otherwise ordinary-seeming Vermont town. As you travel to the edges of town, the wall between our world and the Otherworld thins to little more than a veil. Something is going on up in the hills and woods, people go missing, mysterious figures flit about in the darkness, and it’s all centred around a rock formation. The Devil’s Hand.

The novel covers two timelines. Historical with Sara and her family, and contemporary with Ruthie and hers, set on a family farm at the edge of West Hall (bordering The Devil’s Hand). Both families are a little strange. The landscape is stranger.

McMahon cleverly uses Sara’s diary to connect the two timelines and the landscape to ensure haunting occurs at maximum output. Not one bit of the story is straightforward, the twists and turns will keep you reading until the end.

I look forward to reading more of Jennifer McMahon’s work in 2026.

Cover for Elif Shafak’s “Three Daughters of Eve” featuring orange flowers and vines around the bottom and at bottom, green and navy silhouette of a city with minerets and mosques, belltowers and other buildings. The title is in the centre. The cover overs over a background with a copy of the book cover enlarged behind a layer of transparent dark blue. — *The Three Daughters of Eve* by Elif Shafak

The Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak

⭐⭐⭐⭐

This novel deserves more than a quickie review so I've extended it beyond the original social media post. The Three Daughters of Eve, requires thinking, digestion, digging deep for questions and answers you may not have thought you wanted to know. It also requires time, patience, and the ability to widen your cultural awareness.

I went through most of the novel not quite understanding what it was meant to be about, but it’s worth the perseverance to obtain even a small glimpse into Shafak’s knowledge, belief and purpose as a writer.

Think, she tells us in this novel.

Think.

The Three Daughters of Eve refers to three university friends also at one point described as “the sinner, the believer and the confused”. Peri, the main character who the novel revolves around reflects on her childhood and family, conflicting faith of her parents, and her university days in England after an incident on the way to a party in her home city of Istanbul. Some twenty years have passed by and she’s now coming to terms with the impact on her life.

Each thread of reflection reveals more of the woman she now is, the secrets she has kept and her relationships with her husband and daughter. Each thread also reveals the source of Peri's "confusion", her conflicting belief/non-belief in god, in the origin of god, and in the purpose of faith. This confliction arises from her parents who were opposites in their belief systems (and in most things). At Oxford, she sought to investigate and increase her knowledge of god and belief systems, and fell into the orbit of controversial philosophy lecturer, Professor Azur, and eventually into the scandal that broke apart friendships and ended Peri's university education.

This wasn't a quick and easy read. At times, I felt the story became a little bogged down, but its a big book and, as a whole, pulls the amount of detail, dialogue and thought together very well. If you're interested in philosophy and god, then I recommend you add The Three Daughters of Eve to your library. The discussions author, Shafak, brings to the table may enlighten you. Along the way, you'll something of Turkish and Oxford student culture.

But what is God-an external source or a product of our mind?

Bookcover featuring title across centre. Above the title is a landscape scene of a bridge with three arches crossing a river, medieval castle in the background. Below the title is a women in a blue dress wearing a white head scarf and reading a book. She is facing a dark haired man in blue coat. Beside him a woman with white head scarf kneels. They are standing in front of a farm. The background behind the book cover is in tones of blue with stylised vines in dark blue and gold.

The Price of Loyalty: Serving Adela of Blois by Malve von Hassell author

⭐⭐⭐½

Von Hassell’s latest work is a fictionalised account of Adela of Blois. Adela, daughter of King William 1 of England, married to Stephen, Count of Blois and Chartres, sister to King Henry 1 of England, and the mother of King Stephen of England, was an important and influential figure in her own right,

Malve von Hassell is skilled at bringing her characters to life and sharing her love of history. I thoroughly enjoyed her earlier novel, “The Amber Crane”. Read my review of that novel

Through the fictional Cerdic of Wessex and Giselle, daughter of a French knight and winemaker, von Hassell explores the social history before and during the First Crusades. Cerdic’s ties to Adela, his devotion, and his service paint a picture of a dynamic era in English (Norman) history.

Giselle’s character adds flavour to the novel and to Cerdic. Though she loves him, she understands that Adela, through his position at court and the strength of his loyalty and love, will always come first in his life. But she's not one to fade into the background. Giselle is smart, resolute, and emotionally resilient, as strong a force in her own way as Adela is in hers.

Von Hassell gives life to what can be dry (and often confusing) history. The author portrays Adela's strength and flaws honestly drawing on her own research of the woman and the personality needed to achieve what she did.

I found the historical excerpts at the start of each chapter distracting at first because I know little about that time. Some research to organise my thoughts on who everyone was and what the connections were, and it became easier to navigate. The following chapter explored the background of the “historical record”, and the good writing eased my way into understanding, adding the depth needed to absorb it all.

I recommend you buy yourself a copy of The Price of Loyalty: serving Adela of Blois by Malve von Hassell, grab a notebook and pen, and start reading. You'll be more knowledgeable about this time period as a result. If you're already adept at this time period then jump right in, I'm sure you'll love it. I gave this 31/2 stars only because my lack of knowledge and understanding hindered my ability to absorb the story. Once I moved passed this stumbling block, I enjoyed the story much more.

I hope you've enjoyed my Reading Recommendations - November recap. The next monthly recap will be in February and cover everything I've read over the Christmas and New Year period. I have quite the pile of books waiting for my attention.