Opium and Absinthe – dinipandareads

Special thanks to Lake Union Publishing for providing a digital ARC via NetGalley in exchange for a (very late but) honest review!

Opium and Absinthe
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: 1 July 2020
Genre: Historical Mystery

Panda Rating:

_{(3.5 pandas)}

📖 SYNOPSIS

New York City, 1899. Tillie Pembroke’s sister lies dead, her body drained of blood and with two puncture wounds on her neck. Bram Stoker’s new novel, Dracula, has just been published, and Tillie’s imagination leaps to the impossible: the murderer is a vampire. But it can’t be—can it?

A ravenous reader and researcher, Tillie has something of an addiction to truth, and she won’t rest until she unravels the mystery of her sister’s death. Unfortunately, Tillie’s addicted to more than just truth; to ease the pain from a recent injury, she’s taking more and more laudanum…and some in her immediate circle are happy to keep her well supplied.

Tillie can’t bring herself to believe vampires exist. But with the hysteria surrounding her sister’s death, the continued vampiric slayings, and the opium swirling through her body, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for a girl who relies on facts and figures to know what’s real—or whether she can trust those closest to her.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Murder, blood, exsanguination, drug abuse, addiction, medical abuse, munchausen syndrome’s by proxy, rape recounted, physical abuse recounted

TL;DR: This was an intriguing historical medical thriller that had a bit of a slow start but that I quickly found that I didn’t want to put down. Tillie was a well-developed character whom I pitied and sympathised with, who frustrated me to no end due to her poor decision-making but whom I ultimately admired by the end. I’m terrible at solving mysteries before the great review and although I’d guessed around the motive, I did not guess at all whodunit so that was a fun surprise! Overall, an enjoyable read.

Happy Friday book lovers! We’re back with another First Lines Friday, a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines? Here are the rules:

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!