Robin’s Rave Reviews 2025
THE LOVE ELIXIR OF AUGUSTA STERN by Lynda Cohen Loigman is a charming book with wide audience appeal. The author paints a nostalgic picture of Brownsville, a small neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY, in the 1920s. Augusta grows up there knowing all the locals who visit her father’s pharmacy. Dual timelines switch back and forth from Augusta’s childhood in 1920s Brooklyn to her moving into a Florida senior community in the 1980s. This book doesn’t feel like historical fiction, but through the eyes of young Augusta, we experience a different NYC than we know today, and we see women struggling with the expectations of 1920s society. I strongly recommend you check out THE LOVE ELIXIR OF AUGUSTA STERN by Lynda Cohen Loigman.
Book Summary
Augusta grew up living above her father’s pharmacy with her sister. When their mother dies, Great Aunt Esther comes to live with them to help around the house. However, their father doesn’t appreciate when the aunt’s experience as an herbal healer conflicts with his scientific approach to healing, sometimes stealing away his customers and putting his reputation at risk.
Aunt Esther chants while creating midnight concoctions by candlelight, using a pestle with strange Hebrew letters carved in it, which adds a touch of magical realism to the story. Several of these concoctions help clients after modern medicine and doctors fail them. Augusta is learning from her father, but her aunt’s practices fascinate her as well.
Irving, the pharmacy delivery boy, is Augusta’s best friend, and later, boyfriend. When she thinks he’s about to propose, she uses one of her aunt’s potions on him with disastrous consequences. After that, Augusta swears off Esther’s ways. Augusta continues her study of medicine in pharmacy school, one of five women in her class of 200. Augusta never marries, but she practices her pharmacy skills until just before her 80th birthday.
Feeling displaced in retirement, her niece talks her into moving to an active senior community in Florida. When Augusta arrives, she’s stunned to learn Irving, the boy who broke her heart, lives there. If Augusta can take down her walls and give him a chance to explain what happened all those years ago, they just might have a second chance. Augusta needs to soften her hard edges caused by bitterness based on events sixty years ago.
My ThoughtsÂ
I loved experiencing life in Brownsville when it was more of a neighborhood than part of the huge metropolitan area of New York City, back in a time when small mom and pop boutiques and the corner pharmacy thrived.
The mix of neighborhood characters was delightful. The way the neighborhood respected Augusta’s father and how much they relied on him for medical advice and counseling was fascinating. On the flip side, I also enjoyed that Aunt Esther helped people using simple, natural ingredients after “modern” medicine failed them.
She told Augusta that where she comes from, people call a man like her an apothecary, but as a woman, she was called a witch. Like Esther, Augusta hits some walls as a woman pursuing a career as a pharmacist. I appreciated the story’s feminist point infused as an undercurrent in the story rather than the main focus.
Although the author drops hints that Augusta’s family is Jewish, I would have liked more Jewish traditions woven into the story.
The chapters that take us to Augusta’s elder years show she had a long, successful pharmaceutical career, but she never found love again after Irving. Facing him again after all this time, Augusta has to navigate the feelings she’s hidden behind walls for years and take a chance by learning the other side of the story. Although I liked the 1920s timeline better, we need to see how the story plays out with Irving years later.
It’s a sweet story, making readers who didn’t experience the 1920s feel as if they’ve truly experienced a slice of it through Augusta’s eyes.
About the Author
Lynda Cohen Loigman grew up in Longmeadow, MA. She earned degrees from Harvard College and Columbia Law School. Her debut novel, THE TWO-FAMILY HOUSE, was a USA Today bestseller and a nominee for the Goodreads 2016 Choice Awards in Historical Fiction. She has also written THE WARTIME SISTERS and THE MATCHMAKER’S GIFT. THE LOVE ELIXIR OF AUGUSTA STERN is her fourth novel.
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If You Like…
If you like the sound of THE LOVE ELIXIR OF AUGUSTA STERN, check out my past reviews on these recommendations: THE STORY SHE LEFT BEHIND by Patti Callahan Henry and THE LOST APOTHECARY by Sarah Penner.
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