Review: The Apothecary’s Apprentice
Author: C. S. Doraga
Series: The Wolves of Highfell #1
Publication date: August 5, 2025
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- M/F
- Romantasy
- 3rd person duel POV
- Light/cozy read
- “Clean” romance
- Mystery
- No spice
- 21 year old MMC
- HEA
First Thoughts
I’m happy I read it. It was a nice transition between July and August for me. I’ve had a lot of things going on so, frankly, having a book that wasn’t so mindblowingly amazing that I couldn’t put it down was exactly what I needed.
It’s slow. Agonizingly at times. And the romance is… VERY YA. I think the first kiss (not on the cheek/forehead) happened around the 85% mark. The story is also very slow. The mystery of who the killer was went on and on when the answer was pretty obvious at the start. The real action didn’t start up until about the 90% mark and was obviously rushed after that.
Overall I’m not mad at it. It was a nice, light read on the cozier side. I just think it needed to either be a much shorter book, or have more depth to the story instead of just filler.
Minor spoilers ahead.
Third Person POV
I’m not a huge fan of third person POV but it wasn’t distracting enough to pull me from the story. Unfortunately, both of our main characters are a bit… dull, so it felt like that made it even harder to get engrossed in the story.
The Story
The plot in The Apothecary’s Apprentice is actually reasonably interesting, if not a bit too predictable. It’s a mystery. A character comes to a tragic end very early on and the main characters spend the rest of the book investigating the murder. Mystery is nice, and kept me interested enough to keep going when perhaps I might not have otherwise. I did guess correctly pretty early on so it was just a waiting game to make sure I was right.
Magic System
The magic in The Apothecary’s Apprentice is extremely underwhelming. Somehow, this book is ALL about magic, while simultaneously having NOTHING to do with magic. The main tension revolves around the jealousy by those without magic of those with magic. So magic is constantly mentioned. But that’s it. “Magic.” What kind of magic? I have no clue. It is constantly talked about in a way that makes it seem like those with magic have a responsibility to use it to protect the village, but nobody ever used it! A few times, I think Soren uses his magic to move water to or from a pitcher, but other than that, I have no clue what everyone else can do. It was just very disappointing.
The Romance
Ultimately, my ratings are most strongly influenced by the quality of the romance. It is the main reason I gave this book 3 stars. Look, I don’t need spice to like a book. In fact, I am WAY burnt out on these “romances” that that have nothing to do with love and everything to do with sex. However, what a book DOES need is YEARNING. TENSION. PASSION. And that didn’t really happen between the characters in The Apothecary’s Apprentice. I thought it was sweet for sure, the way he slowly falls for her, the forehead kisses, the hand holding etc. but I needed MORE. In the end I really wasn’t sure WHY they loved each other, except they had just been spending a lot of time together when they weren’t used to that. These characters are just very young. I don’t recall if her age was mentioned, but I think he was 21 years old. And the problems they faced seemed like they needed to be handled by someone more mature.
Final Thoughts
I’m actually glad I read this book. Like I mentioned, sometimes it’s nice reading something I have no problem putting down for a while. I was nice, overall. Thanks so much to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for allowing me to read and review this ARC.
