Set in the Victorian era, Lucy Peterson is a modern woman who has created a formula for a salve to treat croup. It goes missing, and she believes that her rival apothecary is responsible. Lucy hires Jonathan Thorne, a PI, to investigate. Thorne has his own secrets, and is protecting his young daughter from scorn due to the circumstances surrounding her beginnings.
Thorne and Lucy work together to find the culprit and to regain her formula so she can patent it and save her apothecary. Along the way, they fall in love - unwillingly, but they can't escape it, and know they must bond together to overcome the obstacles in their way based on family and society expectations. ( )

The Damsels of Discovery series is a spin-off of this author’s Secret Scientists of London series. Athena’s Retreat is still mentioned, but not featured; Winthram (the doorman from Athena’s) is here, and Victor Armitage and his Guardians of Domesticity are here as background noise in this book. I don’t know if they’ll feature in upcoming books, but I’d love to see them brought to their knees. I do like this story featuring ordinary folks and not aristocrats as in the earlier series.

Jonathan Thorn is the disgraced, disowned third son who made his living as a boxer. That career gave him a disfigured face, and the discovery of his illegitimate daughter gave him a new lease on life. He is now a sober, morally straight, churchgoing, single father who works as an investigator for Tierney & Company. He has considered marrying his landlady, the pious Mrs. Merkle, to provide a mother figure for his nine-year-old daughter, Sadie. Mrs. Merkle, however, has sold the rooming house and moved to the seaside – so Thorn and Sadie take lodging above the apothecary that is his next assignment.

Lucinda Peterson is a fully accredited apothecary – one of only two female apothecaries in London (maybe England). The other is her sister, Juliet, who works tirelessly to relieve women’s suffering in the East End. Lucy is a brilliant chemist who developed a formula for a throat lozenge – only to have it stolen by her erstwhile lover, Duncan Rider. How could she have been such a stupid fool? Love is definitely NOT for her. Now, she’s developed another formula for a salve to treat baby’s croup. A patent on that formula could earn enough money to save her apothecary and allow her to hire assistants to run the shop so she could concentrate on her formulations. Except, that formula has gone missing. She just knows that somehow Duncan Rider has stolen it also. Since she’ll not stand idly by this time, she goes to Tierney & Company to hire a detective to catch Duncan red-handed.

I enjoyed this author’s writing style and was generally pleased with the storyline. I liked Lucy and I liked Thorn very well. Both were good solid characters – each with their own set of flaws to overcome. I thought Lucy was much, much, much too forgiving and was a doormat. I also didn’t feel the romance – the lust, yes – but not the romance. An epilogue would surely have helped the feeling of the romance and could have given us some grounding for their future. Do the grandparents participate in the future? Do they reside over the apothecary? Oh! One more thing. I detest that the villain(s) got no punishment – none – nada – zilch. I’m glad to have read this book, but I wouldn’t read it a second time. However, I will try the second book in the series to see how it goes. I wonder if the next books in the series will feature Lucy’s sister, Juliet, and her brother, David. That could be interesting since I didn’t care for either character in this book.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. ( )

This story takes place in the same world as Everett's The Secret Scientists of London and stars Lucinda Peterson who is an apothecary and Jon Thorne who is a former prize fighter turned private investigator.

Lucinda is outraged that her recipe for a cough lozenge was stolen by the man she was dating and turned into big money for him. When her formula for a croup remedy goes missing, she naturally suspects the ex. She hires Jon Thorne to find her missing formula and find out if it was the ex who stole it.

Thorne takes the case, but he has no intention of falling for Lucinda. He's sworn off beautiful women and many other things including alcohol, music, and dancing in his quest to make a good life for his illegitimate daughter Sadie. Since his relationship with Sadie's mother - a beautiful member of the demimondaine- failed, Thorne has tried to create a safe though constrained world for himself and his daughter.

Lucy has been burned in the romance department too. Her suitor dropped her and declared her unmarriageable after they had a physical relationship. Then he stole her formula for cough lozenges. However, sparks fly as the investigation continues causing Thorne to question his old promises. There is a lot to investigate here beyond the former suitor. A growing political organization which targets women who work outside the home has set its sights on Lucy's pharmacy and the free clinic where her sister works caring for poor women. Lucy's own brother is keeping secrets which causes Thorne to suspect him for a while.

This was almost more a social commentary than a historical romance. Lucy's belief in women's rights to control their own reproductive rights conflicts with Thorne's Victorian beliefs that women - good women - should let their husbands or fathers manage their lives and sex outside of marriage makes a woman unwomanly.

Fans of Everett's other books will enjoy this return to the setting of her earlier books. Fans of romances with a bit of kinky sex will also enjoy it. ( )