Play Book Tag discussion

A nice, read-in-one-day type of puzzle. I surely enjoyed it.

This book offers us a historical mystery set in 1920, with a scientist heroine (a botanist) and a hero who suffers from PTSD after the First Great War. I loved both of them. As the title of the book suggests, someone is poisoned at a party that our heroine attends. When the professor she works for is accused of using one of his plants for the said poisoning, the heroine takes it into her own hands to solve the case and give her beloved professor back his freedom. She teams up with a young scholar who studies bacteria and who had served in the same war that killed her father and her first love. There's strong chemistry between the two heroes, but no actual love story takes place.

There's good pacing, interesting characters, a mystery that kept my attention, and little remarques about how hard it was to be a woman of science in that age (unfortunately, the science world is still sexist, but I hope we've taken some steps forward since 100 years ago). There's a lot of talk about botany and plants, especially poisonous plants. As someone with a mild interest in this topic, I enjoyed it. I will definitely read the next book in the series.

For fans of strong heroines in historical mysteries, I'm sure this book won't disappoint.