Londres, 1665. Susannah, hija de un boticario viudo, ha ayudado desde niña a su padre y se ha convertido en toda una experta en remedios naturales. El aroma resinoso de la lavanda, la esencia del romero, el regaliz y la trementina han impregnado siempre el ambiente que respiraba. Cuando su padre vuelve a casarse con una mujer mucho más joven que él, que además tiene tres hijos, su universo se derrumba. En plena epidemia de la peste bubónica, la propuesta de matrimonio de un encantador amigo de la familia, Henry Savage, parece la mejor solución para huir de su situación. Pero a medida que la epidemia avanza por toda la ciudad, su marido resulta ser alguien distinto de lo que ella esperaba. Susannah necesitará todo su coraje y su pasión para salvarse de la tragedia, personal y colectiva, y deberá luchar por encontrar su sitio en un mundo demasiado complejo.

1665, Suzannah Leyton lives and works with her father in his apothercary shop. Her farther announces that he is to remarry a lady who already has children. It's clear that Suzannah and her new stepmother are not going to get on. However Suzannah gets a proposal of marriage from the charming Henry Savage which seems like a way out.

I liked this book and quite enjoyed seeing what was going to become of Suzannah. The basis of the story has been told many times so did sort of become predictable. What made the story more interesting was the time period.

The story of Suzannah is set in the time of the plague and leading up to the great fire of London. This made the story more interesting than what it may have been. Without the historical elements to the story it would have been just an ordinary romance. I would have liked perhaps a few more pages about the fire as this was just a short section towards the end. The ending was sugary and in true romance style all well that ends well.

Overall an good read set against an interesting part of history that kept my interest. ( )

This is a wonderful debut novel, set in London in 1665 in the midst of the bubonic plague. Not a scenario I expected to enjoy, but the writing is excellent, with just enough detail to paint a vivid picture of the tragic, often ghastly scenarios, without gratuitous gore.

Susannah is the daughter of an apothecary in an age when women did not generally work outside the home; her life changes when her widowed father decides to marry again. There's a gentle love story underlying the whole of the book, with jealousies, betrayals and suspicions, but there's a whole lot more too. Not just the background of 17th century London in the grip of plague, although that was very well done and brought the time alive to me in a way that history lessons could never do; I also began to understand the real dangers of childbirth and unscrupulous medics, and also learned first-hand (or so it seemed) about how African slaves were perceived, even encouraged in this era.

Possibly a little long-winded in places, but overall an excellent read. Highly recommended. I'd give it four and a half stars if I could. ( )