Why read Beloved Poison?

Book cover of Beloved Poison

Book description

Ramshackle and crumbling, trapped in the past and resisting the future, St. Saviour's Infirmary awaits demolition. Within its stinking wards and cramped corridors, the doctors bicker and backstab. Ambition, jealousy, and loathing seethe beneath the veneer of professional courtesy. Always an outsider, and with a secret of her own to…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Beloved Poison as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Tonya Mitchell

Author

This book checked a lot of boxes for me from the jump: a decrepit infirmary, the grisliness of 19th-century medicine, a soot-filled London that seethes with filth, secrets, and evil.

This book is the first in a series featuring one of the best protagonists I’ve encountered: Jem Flockhart, an intelligent young woman who must disguise herself as a boy to continue her work at St. Saviour’s Infirmary as an apothecary. The mystery at its heart was every bit as Gothic as I’d hoped.

From Tonya's list on The best historical fiction books with gothic vibes that will give you the creeps.

Kim Taylor Blakemore

Author

Jem Flockhart is an apprentice apothecary at St. Saviour’s Infirmary in London. The building is falling down around the patients. The doctors hate each other. Jem finds six tiny coffins in the crumbling dank chapel – and a murder mystery begins. This book pulled me right into the dark rancid squalor of gaslit London and doesn’t shy in its horrific details. It’s dark, it’s atmospheric, it’s an amazing read. So glad it’s the first in a series!

From Kim's list on The best gothic novels for a cold winter’s night.