This was a DNF for me. I think it was just a case of timing and mood, and maybe needing a physical book over an audio book. I may try it again someday.

A historical novel that, sadly, reflects modern struggles. There are a lot of stories for the reader to keep track, which was occasionally confusing. Did enjoy having the dog's POV!

Book itself is 3, but the audiobook narrator does such a great job it deserves an extra star.

(duplicate review due to approval for eARC and audiobook)

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this audio book.

This one took me a bit to get into with all of the different characters perspectives (including a dog?) but I ended up really enjoying it! It hits on a lot of heavy topics that are still prevalent today and was a worthwhile read. The narrator did a good job as well.

Heavy and dramatic story about a family of immigrants living in Canada in the early 20th century. Well written and narrated, it addresses evergreen struggles of being a human in a culture like abortion, love/sex, and queerness. Highly recommend.

Audio ARC from publisher via NetGalley, but the opinions are my own.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy of Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue in exchange for an honest review. This one will stick with me. The portrait of a family that is captured here is timeless. The book covers loss, acceptance, love…but also really captures the social and political climate at the beginning of the 20th century. While reading this was incredibly sad, I also would recommend it. Please be aware that there are several TW topics covered in this text.

A beautiful and complex novel that had a little too much going on. The story follows four sisters and their lives in Vancouver. The eldest, Georgina, is unhappily married and getting more bitter by the day. Then there is Morag, pregnant and madly in love with her husband, Llewellyn. What she doesn’t know is that her husband has also managed to get her sister, Isla, pregnant as well - and Isla being unwed knows she can’t keep the baby. Finally, there is Harriet, suffering the constraints of not only being a woman but being attracted to women as well. Told in alternating perspectives of the sisters, Llewellyn, and the dog, Rue, the reader gets a glimpse of a woman’s life in the 1920s, with all of the trials and tribulations.

Lots of tough topics arise in this elegantly written novel: abortion, extramarital affairs, homophobia and women’s rights, to name but a few. The audio was great and the novel overall was well done, but the multiple points of view made it a little hard to keep threads together at times. Maybe I would have felt differently if I had read it rather than listened to the audio!

Four sisters one can’t love who she wants the other moms who she shouldn’t and a third has a botched abortion due to loving without protection the oldest sister takes all this on board and feels like she Mascarell the others and it makes for an intriguing historical fiction book living in Vancouver right after World War I just having lost their brother with their mom looking like she’s not far behind puts a lot of worry on the sisters but when one of them has a botched surgery it brings them all together but a betrayal may just take it all apart. This was such a good literary fiction book I love books set in the early 1900s in late 1800s in this book totally satisfied I thought the narrator did a awesome job and I will definitely be looking forward to more books by this author. I want to thank the publisher and met gala for my free arc copy

DNF at 12%

This book just wasn't for me. The blurb really grabbed me, but the actual book, not so much.

I'm really torn on the writing style. On one hand, there are some really beautiful lines. On the other hand, the first person narrative with multiple narrators just sounds off and the flow is overly monotonous. It has an almost iambic pentameter feel. I know it is not, but something with the sentence length and flow just feels very terse and repetitive and makes it difficult to read.

Set in the 1920s Vancouver, the novel follows the McKenzie family of four sisters, each experiencing their own versions of love. Morag, one of the middle sisters, is married to Llewellyn. Isla, however, finds she is pregnant after her affair with Llewellyn, and chooses to have a "back ally" abortion, in result of no other choices. Georgina is married to a strict patriarchal man, whom she feels no love. Harriet-Jean is the youngest, and finds herself in love with her close friend Fleur. Harriet also is the finder, and caretaker of Rue, the beagle she finds among the trees in the park.

The novel was interesting and emotional. I felt a connection with the characters and sympathized with the struggles they faced for the most part. I also personally, love Rue and her witty charm, and ability to provide an "outsider/dog" perspective. Higdon did a good job of explaining and illustrating the life and its difficulties in the 1920s. Although the topics and struggles seem so far from us, it is clear that we have not advanced as well as we would like in the current times. Many of the topics are still being discussed in our political world...sadly.

Overall, the audiobook was enjoyable, the narrator was clear and pleasant to listen to.

I am surprised by this book! In a good way.

I will admit I am not the target audience for this book. Historical fiction is not a genre I usually gravitate towards—but I was drawn in by the title. And I really enjoyed this book! If you ARE a historical fiction reader, and especially if you happen to be from Vancouver, I think you will love this.

The first few chapters were slow for me, as I had trouble keeping track of all the characters (I think this would not have been an issue if I had been reading the paper book instead of an audiobook) and multiple plot lines. The book starts in the middle of many stories, throwing the reader right into the sisters’ lives and providing backstory peppered in throughout, rather than moving chronologically and giving the context first. I liked this approach once I had a handle on who everyone was.

The characters are almost all nuanced and balanced, with even the most frustrating characters having redeeming moments, and no character being all good. The author chose to write most of the book in third person with the exception of two first person characters—one of the sisters, and a dog. I really liked the chapters told from the dog’s point of view, it added a whimsical quality to an otherwise intensely realistic story. Although it took a bit of time to get into it, it was ultimately the real, honest, and messy relationships between the characters that kept me reading.

The writing style manages to incorporate a large vocabulary without ever sounding overdone or pretentious. At times it is very beautiful.

The book is centred around on multiple issues: feminism, reproductive rights, LGBTQ experiences, etc, and all are woven inextricably into the story, without ever feeling shoehorned in (I hate when books feel preachy, even if I agree with what they are preaching). The only area where I felt like more could have been said was to do with the character of Flore. She is the wealthiest of the main characters, and is also the one most involved in labour organizing, attending meetings about workers’ rights etc. At one point another character (Harriet) calls out her privilege, expressing frustration that Flore doesn’t seem to realize how serious it would be if Harriet was fired from her job. It would have been interesting to see more exploration of this…
The conflict between women wanting/needing access to abortion/birth control and others (mainly men) not understanding how dire this is, was well written. I also would have liked to see more of how that conflict played out politically (a few times there was mention of characters attending talks etc about these issues but we were never brought there as a reader).

If you like audiobook readers who sound very emotionally invested in the story (dynamic/not flat) you will like the audiobook.

Lastly I will say, because of all the different plot lines interwoven, I think this would make a really good mini-series or show…I could imagine it while listening. I would watch!

Thanks to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for the ARC!

This book was not my style. I found the plot to be very slow, and difficult to get into. I also found it to be difficult to keep track of the characters at the beginning, and the timeline as well. I listened to this book as an audiobook though so that might have been part of the issue. I struggled with all the changes in perspective, and found the addition of a dog as a narrator to be both odd and also unnecessary.
The topics discussed including abortion, sexual orientation and women's rights issues, which were big in the 20's. These issues were relatively well handled.

I did like that this book was set in Vancouver, a city I am familiar with, so all the familiar place names was nice to see.

I listened to an Audio version of this book, and the narrator was good, but I don't think this book is the best in audio format as it can be difficult to keep track of the timeline, and characters, especially a the beginning.

I recieved an advanced copy of this audiobook from netgalley. All opinions are my own.

TW: Abortion, Addiction, Fertility Struggles, Infidelity

Four sisters living and working in Vancouver are struggling to find love and deal with grief in their own ways. Two of the sisters are married, one happily, one not. Two of the sisters are unwed and live at home, one pregnant, one not. With their laudanum-addicted mother requiring much of their time and attention, Isla decides to pursue a back-alley abortion that nearly results in her death. As the men in their lives react strongly to this news, the sisters find themselves struggling with their own truths, wondering if there will ever be space in their lives for them to be exactly who they desire to be.

This was a good work of historical fiction that focuses on four sisters. There are many themes explored, including what it meant to be a “deviant” woman during the 1920s, grief, sexuality, and love. There is a strong focus on pregnancies, both wanted and unwanted, as well as difficulties with conception and carrying to term. A central focus of this work was about the difficulty in having an abortion during this time as well as the inherent dangers that came with it (sadly still relevant today). The author incorporated many historical details around this theme, which added to the setting and strength of the work. This is definitely a heavier read that generally feels melancholic throughout.

The story is told from the POV of several characters, including one dog (which I wasn’t sure how I felt about at first but came to enjoy). It’s told in the third-person except for Isla’s POV, which is in first-person. The characterization was good. I enjoyed the exploration of the sisters and how different they all were, though they weren’t all as developed as they could have been. For example, there were a couple of characters where we were told they were a certain way but never saw them do anything to back that up. I especially enjoyed the exploration of how difficult it is to break from one’s role when it’s been assigned to you by family members and becomes the expected norm; this was mostly looked at with Georgina and made her storyline that much more compelling.

The author’s writing style is lovely. It is poetic and lyrical without being overdone, making it easy to become lost in the text. This is not a plot-heavy read but is character driven, so there are often flashbacks or memories incorporated throughout. While I did enjoy this, there were no clear transitions between these flashbacks and the present timeline, so it sometimes got a bit difficult to keep track of what happened when and muddied the timeline some.

If you enjoy character-driven historical fiction that focuses on heavier topics, then this is certainly worth checking out. My thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for allowing me to read this work, which will be published September 12, 2023. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

A well-written novel about complex, imperfect sisters, orbiting the focal point of an (illegal and almost fatal) abortion. I truly enjoyed it all the way through and highly recommend it.

Thank you to Net Galley for this audiobook ARC in exchange for an honest review!

1920s- Four sisters living in Vancouver are the subjects of this book which touches on addiction, sexuality, infidelity, secrets, police corruption, abortion, loss, and love. They all love, and all are yearning.

The sisters: Morag is a pregnant woman in love with her husband, Llewellyn. She is not the only one in love with him. Georgina is unhappily married to a man she does not love. Harriet-Jean still lives with their mother and is in love with another woman. Isla is in love with her sister's husband and has had an abortion.

This book is somewhat slow, yet I found it to be enjoyable. I found myself swept into their lives and felt for all, but also was frustrated by two of them. The book begins with Isla nearly dying from an illegal back-alley abortion. An investigation begins. How will this change the sisters? What will happen?

So many things have changed for women, but some things have remained the same. This book depicts the struggles, the lack of choices, and the aftermath of choices. Where women bear the brunt (if not all) of the consequences for choices that are made. This is not a happy-go-lucky book. But it was a very nicely done historical fiction book that shows life in the 1920's in Vancouver.

I had both the book and the audiobook version of this book.

Engaging, thought provoking, well written.

3.5 stars