***Spoiler Alert: This entire review is riddled with spoilers for this book. Read at your own risk.***

Wow! I feel like I need to post a few disclaimers and use a lot of spoiler tags for this review. First, I picked this book to read from Netgalley for several reasons. I was looking for something different, not really in my wheelhouse, interesting, and horizon-broadening. I hemmed and hawed a lot and researched Bowery - whom I had never read before - before making the request on Netgalley. I wasn't sure I would like it. I knew I was taking a flyer on this. I knew there was a good chance I might get burned because this was the third book in a series. But, I really wanted to give it a go and I'd been targeting historical romance with a twist for a while. I wasn't even sure I'd be authorized for the book.

And then I started reading the book. I was disappointed. It was boring. No one seemed particularly interesting or sympathetic. I liked Isaac well enough, I guess. Lucy was a non-starter. Meg was ok. Grace was abrasive. I struggled to see the emotional connections. The only time I got excited was when Isaac was doing his chemistry stuff. I figured this was it. I probably was going to end up DNFing the book because I rarely get into a book where I've been bored for at least half of it. But, just before I set it aside, something interesting happened. I knew I'd at least give it one more go because that something was very intriguing.

I did come back to the book, months later, obviously. And I did not DNF it. In fact, I all but devoured the last third of the book. I don't know what it was that was different. Was it me? Was it the book? Was it something about the characters? Was it that there was - finally! - some hook to the plot? Maybe it was all of that. But that last third of the book was dense! And here's where my review gets... difficult. Because by dense, I mean, there was a lot of politics packed into that last third: racial politics, sexual politics, politics politics, class politics, just... a lot.

Let's start with the racial politics. The main characters in That Potent Alchemy are black in 1800s Britain. There's a lot to unpack there. There are issues of slavery, abolition, law, categories (freedman, slave, etc). And all of this is touched on, if only lightly. Isaac's mother is blonde and visually white. But I don't know the laws in Britain at the time. Is her marriage legal? Is she passing? Did I miss something in the book that gives more clues to this? She is an abolitionist; that much is stated flat out. I'm fascinated by this part of the story but there isn't enough (or I missed something somewhere) to give me clues to how Isaac sees this or his views on race. We really only see his mother's views. I'd have liked to have seen more. I am curious enough to want to know more about the reality of all this at the time.

Then there are the sexual politics of the story. Grace is the gender fluid character. She is a woman physically. She sometimes wears men's clothes and she has a "prick in a box" which she uses with Isaac. But it is hard to see how she sees herself. There are attributes she embodies and attributes she wants to embody and those are tied into the gender questions. She openly admits that she wears men's clothes both because she feels safer posing as a man and for reasons of comfort. In the 1800s in the lower class areas of London, that is hardly a surprise. But that alone does not make her gender fluid. I've read quite a few historical romances where the woman wears men's clothes for a number of reasons, usually because it's easier to ride, fence, and/or get into places they could not otherwise go as a woman at that time. Grace also doesn't seem to have issues with her body. She doesn't lament her breasts or curves. She doesn't feel a sense of dissociation with her physical form.

What I do see in Grace though, is a fear of powerlessness. And Grace sees power in men. That is, of course, normal for the time period. Her sense of this is exacerbated by her childhood and her relationship with her parents. Her mother was weak and dominated by her father (as we see only through Grace's eyes). Her father saw Grace as a money maker and used her. So her sense of powerlessness as a woman and her need to not be powerless are natural reactions to very real circumstances in her life. This translates into her desire to be powerful or, at the very least, not be powerless. She translates this into "I must be as a man."

She also translates this into her sexual life where she is not willing to be fucked by Isaac unless he allows her to fuck him first. This is especially important as it carries meanings and connotations far above the simple sexual connotations of it. It is true that physically she absolutely does fuck him with her "prick in a box" before allowing him to penetrate her. But in the greater sense, in the power sense, she is displaying a dominance that is considered "masculine" and a need to be the one in control and not be "fucked over" by some man.

Which leads to the D/s - overtones?, undertones? - in Grace's and Isaac's relationship. Grace's fears of being powerless lead to her taking a rather dominant role. Isaac openly is the supplicant to her. He does all the running. When he asks her to marry him, he makes it clear he will wait. She is the one making the demands about how they will live and he not only makes none, but is willing to give up anything (including having children) to have her. He is never in the dominant position with Grace. She calls all the shots. Now, in some ways, I'm not surprised by this from Isaac. His mother also comes across as the dominant partner (but not Dominant) in her marriage so a strong woman is something Isaac is used to and favors. Via sex though, Grace definitely comes across as more "capital d" Dominant and there are aspects of how Isaac thinks about her that remind me of books I've read in the femdom category. This is most notable in the worshipful attitude and the desire to lift her up and be the wind beneath her wings (in Isaac's case, quite literally).

And then there are the politics politics of the book and where the plot had its twist. The political, financial, and societal implications of being singled out by the Prince Regent are vastly important. In That Potent Alchemy this manifests itself in the bet Isaac makes with Thrilby. The bet and what comes of it is the plot twist that intrigued me way back when I thought I might DNF the book. Having the attention and therefore the money of the Prince Regent is huge for a theatre. The politics of who can do which plays and how are fascinating and while some of this is in the first 2/3 of the book, it's really how it impacts the last third that makes it interesting. The Thrilby bet and the resulting disaster demonstrate how very important political patronage was. Like the racial politics, I think I would have preferred to see a bit more of it, but it certainly is there and an important part of this book.

Lastly, there are the class politics of the book. There are actually a lot of hints about the class differences in this book. But they are just that, hints. I think this part of the book was very well done. There are no rich people in this book except as theatre goers and we see only tangentially the impact they have on the lives of those in Chelsea. Of course, the simple act of naming neighborhoods is profound - Mayfair, Chelsea, Charing Cross. Each has its class implications and each are described in small enough terms to get the point across but also to draw lines between groups of people. I think this was so well woven into the fabric of the story that it was almost seamless and invisible. Simple words like what fabric someone is wearing had immediate effects and understanding about someone.

Whew! That's quite a lengthy discussion. So, the end result is that I picked this book for something different and I did indeed get something different. I got something denser than I anticipated and I got something that certainly made me think - as evidenced by this review. Normally when a book really makes me think I give it pretty high marks. So, why the 2.5 "It's ok" stars? Yes, the last third of this book was packed and actually was quite good. The problem is that I had to wade through the first 2/3 of the book to get there. I almost DNF'd this book and if I hadn't gotten it from Netgalley where I try really, really hard not to DNF anything I would have. It just took too darn long to get to a place that got me going. I'll definitely try Tess Bowery again because I don't think I have ever unpacked a romance quite the way I did That Potent Alchemy which means it was pretty potent.