The Fair Botanists: Could one rare plant hold the key to a thousand riches?

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While the author’s note makes it clear that the story was designed to be ‘light-hearted… but catch[ing] the spirit of the city at this fascinating time in history’, the end result of this overabundance of lightness is a plot so thin and pale that it vanishes the moment you blink. Seeing fictional characters walking side by side with real historical figures was magical and it created a wonderful picture of Edinburgh society at that time. And of course, I greatly enjoyed reading about botany and Elizabeth's artistic and Belle's perfumer interests as all of these are my own, too. I hope they’ll stay with you, in Sara Sheridan’s words, “as an echo of our foremothers and the lives they might have lived, for history is endlessly complicated and full of secrets, and in my view is as much herstory as his one”. There is excitement in the city as large trees and plants of various sorts are gradually moved to their new home.

Enough plot (but not too much), interesting characters, a good mix of the real history and fun diversions.Whether that’s true or not, The Fair Botanists, the latest in Sara Sheridan’s seriously impressive line-up of work, is exactly that sort of novel. Reading this book feels like trying to eat tissue paper – bland, pointless, and ultimately forgettable. In fact I liked Belle better than any of the other characters simply because the author does something so very different in creating a driven, hard-headed sex worker that you can really empathise with.

The Fair Botanists transports the reader to 19th century Edinburgh, a city divided into rich and poor areas, and undergoing rapid development with new housing springing up on land formerly given over to farming. Although I enjoyed the book and appreciated the atmosphere of anticipation it never completely hooked me, despite my interest in the central protagonists of Elizabeth and Belle, because I only ever felt superficially involved with their dilemmas. Sheridan creates a perfect blend of characters including William McNab who is supervising the moving of the plants and trees from their former site at Leith, and Mhairi, the blind girl who has the gift of detecting different types of whisky and analysing what scents make up a particular perfume.

I liked the representation and the author's overall attention to the characters in the story as she made sure even the side characters had their own intetions, desires and developments, which made the ensemble and the story itself feel realistic but modern at the same time. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories. This was such a brilliant book to sit and read, I found a fabulous story that does have historical facts and of course there is the botanical part of the story. The imminent flowering of a special tree has the city fascinated, as has the expected visit of the King. It felt very rushed, and it felt like there was suddenly way too much history woven into the story for the word count.

Elizabeth Rocheid is newly widowed and has arrived in Edinburgh from London to live with her late husband's aunt at Inverleith House, while Isabel "Belle" Brodie is carving a living as the city's most upmarket courtesan. The unlikely friendship between the two ladies with very different ideas about life and love form the main plot of Sara Sheridan’s latest novel, The Fair Botanists. The story surrounds the pomp and intrigue in Scotland’s Enlightenment City centred around the Royal Botanic Garden in the run-up to the visit of King George IV. The two women bond over their shared interest in botany, although Belle is determined to keep both her real identity and the reason for her interest in the garden secret from her new friend. Independent, slightly racy and driven in the directions of pleasure and desire rather than in the direction that society dictates she should go.

So much of this book is just padding, giving us unnecessary information and an abundance of useless detail, as though the author was just trying to meet a wordcount.