eARC Review: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
Release date: 8 October 2024
Rating: 5/5
Book box: BOTM September
Synopsis: It's never too late for new beginnings.
On the cusp of turning eighty, newly retired pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to Rallentando Springs—an active senior community in southern Florida—she unexpectedly crosses paths with Irving Rivkin, the delivery boy from her father’s old pharmacy—and the man who broke her heart sixty years earlier.
As a teenager growing up in 1920’s Brooklyn, Augusta’s role model was her father, Solomon Stern, the trusted owner of the local pharmacy and the neighborhood expert on every ailment. But when Augusta’s mother dies and Great Aunt Esther moves in, Augusta can’t help but be drawn to Esther’s curious methods. As a healer herself, Esther offers Solomon’s customers her own advice—unconventional remedies ranging from homemade chicken soup to a mysterious array of powders and potions.
As Augusta prepares for pharmacy college, she is torn between loyalty to her father and fascination with her great aunt, all while navigating a budding but complicated relationship with Irving. Desperate for clarity, she impulsively uses Esther’s most potent elixir with disastrous consequences. Disillusioned and alone, Augusta vows to reject Esther’s enchantments forever.
Sixty years later, confronted with Irving, Augusta is still haunted by the mistakes of her past. What happened all those years ago and how did her plan go so spectacularly wrong? Did Irving ever truly love her or was he simply playing a part? And can Augusta reclaim the magic of her youth before it’s too late?
Review
I don’t often start books and finish them within 24 hours, but when I do, I rate them 5 stars. The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern pleasantly surprised me. I did not expect to be entranced by 1920’s pharmacy life in Brooklyn, and Aunt Esther stole my heart and made me wish longingly for a great aunt like she who can make wonderful soup and medicines. The alternating timeline chapters expertly built suspense, and a second-chance romance with two protagonists in their 80’s made my heart melt. Loigman may have made it to my favorite authors list, despite the fact that the book was not high fantasy or a space opera scifi. It’s amazing when we break out of our genre shells and try new things.
Characters make or break a story for me. Loigman’s character writing is among some of the best I’ve read. Solomon Stern, widowed father of two young women, stands aloof with his grief and pain yet supports his daughters in their endeavors, both professionally and romantically. Augusta, the young teenaged girl without a mother, takes an interest in her father’s profession and makes him proud with her diligence. Irving, the young boy in search of a way to escape poverty, never loses his moral compass in exchange for the easy way to affluence. And finally Esther, wonderfully eccentric Aunt Esther, who brings the old world with her to Augusta’s doorstep and leaves magic and healing whenever she cooks. (I definitely looked up several recipes for kreplach and plan to try and make some one day.) It is no small thing for an author to write a myriad of characters who equally worm their ways into a reader’s heart, but Loigman certainly did.
The 1920’s, right after WWI but well before WWII and the Great Depression, has always been a time period of great interest for me. Loigman gives such a vivid representation of 1920’s Brooklyn; I felt, saw, and smelled all the places described. Pharmacies and speakeasys, department stores, and even just regular homes come alive in this story. Within this expertly constructed setting, we meet Augusta, a forlorn young girl who takes up her father’s mantel to make medicines for people and one day help advance medicine to a degree that will help find cures or treatments for diseases that currently have no positive prognosis, which always provides compelling motivation for a main character. She slowly falls in love with the young man who works for her father, Irving, who matches her resolve with his abundant integrity.
Augusta Stern ultimately gives readers a heart-felt second-chance romance with a side of miscommunication (which usually irritates me to no end, but here I felt it done well). The two lovebirds meet up again much later in life and rebuild their relationship, all the while seemingly making the same mistakes twice. The second time around, however, they’ve got quite a bit more maturity and experience behind them to solve the problem and make things work out how they should.
I can’t wait to pick up Loigman’s backlist and give it a read. If those titles are anywhere near as amazing as Augusta, I’ll absolutely love them.
My thanks to St. Martin’s Press via Netgalley for the eARC, for which I willingly give my own, honest opinion.
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