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Opium and Absinthe

A Novel

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Opium and Absinthe

By: Lydia Kang
Narrated by: Bailey Carr
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Summary

From the bestselling author of A Beautiful Poison comes another spellbinding historical novel full of intrigue, occult mystery, and unexpected twists.

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.

©2020 Lydia Kang (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Amateur Sleuths Detective Fiction Historical Mystery Women Sleuths Women's Fiction Exciting
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All stars
Most relevant
Interesting story. Loved the gothic elements. the narration was actually ok, apart from the children. Unclear why they were played as Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins!

Fab!

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No, doesn't sum up the content of this book: it is simply a line the main character thinks of which I actually found enjoyable.

I really expected to like this book. Drawn by the lovely cover, fool that I was, and intrigued by the brief resume, I bought it despite already having reservations about the narrator from the four minute excerpt. Sadly, the twelve and one half hours of this miserable tale felt more like double that time as the 'heroine', a spoilt, wealthy, clumsy, petulant and immature young woman drooled, regurgitated and craved either laudenham, opium, morphine or heroin in the final few months of the nineteenth century. Had she been a child of twelve or so, her character would have made far more sense, (asking constant questions such as how an elephant smelt?) but she had to be much older for the slow burn romance to take place. Theoretically a murder mystery, it was much more a series of not very well drawn character studies as seen by this silly woman as she doses herself with ever increasing drug usage following her breaking her collar bone after being thrown from her horse because of total incompetence, an accident which had occurred at the same time as the killing of her older sister.

Although of marriage age, Tillie is silly, emotionally but a little girl, even if she does like to read and find out about things. The narration emphasizes this. Lydia Kang's voice is perfect for children's stories. But in this book, which requires the listener to form a picture of a fully adult woman for the character to stand a chance of succeeding, she only makes the main character sound childish. Again, nothing wrong with her actual narration other than being totally wrong for this book (although her individual are limitted, and the accent of the British Lady Remington is a cross between Irish/Scottish and Australian - awful).

So, definitely not a book I would recommend, despite the lovely cover. It is well written, hence the three stars, and, being set in an earlier time frame - a little over one hundred years ago - attitudes and circumstances were certainly different from today. I am sure many people will fully revel in the plight of the poor, plucky little rich girl whose elders wanted her to conform to the social modes and which she did not want. But the author would have done better to remove the time frame still further into the past, except then she would have been unable to use the frequent Dracula quotations at the beginning of the chapters. Ah, well...

"A carnal catastrophe of crumbs."

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great book different from what I normally read
enjoyedthe story and characters
very scandalous
interesting and educational lots of twists and turns

loved the story and the characters

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wonderfully descriptive, this book had me guessing through to the end who the perpetrator was.

Superb, highly recommended

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it was great! intriguing but not too gory. some of the story seemed quite young and I wished some of the other characters interconnected into the murder mystery in a more complex way. But I liked the slightly awkward heroine who eventually found her voice.

I liked the narrator.

looking forward to more of Lydia Kang's books.

really enjoyed!!!

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