Bitter Medicine

Written by Mia Tsai

Narrated by Natalie Naudus

As a descendant of the Chinese god of medicine, ignored middle child Elle was destined to be a doctor. Instead, she is underemployed as a mediocre magical calligrapher at the fairy temp agency. Nevertheless, she has been covertly outfitting her client and crush with high-powered glyphs.

Half-elf Luc, the agency’s top security expert, has his own secret: he’s responsible for a curse laid on two children from an old assignment. To heal them, he’ll need to perform his job duties with unrelenting excellence and earn time off from his tyrannical boss.

When Elle saves Luc’s life on a mission, he brings her a gift and a request for stronger magic—except the next job is to hunt down Elle’s murderous younger brother. But Elle is loyal to her family, and Luc is bound by his true name. To win freedom from duty, and find happiness together, they will need to make unexpected sacrifices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781705070185

Reviews for Bitter Medicine

[glennis.leblanc · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Set in our would where there is magic and magical beings but hidden from humans. Elle is hiding her talents for magic and art by working creating glyphs for employees of the magical company she works for. A regular customer that she has a connection with asks her to do something that is more in her power range and even as she protests she can’t she does agree to do it because she has a crush on this half elf in hiding. Everyone things Luc is a full elf, but Elle knows the difference by using her family magic of medicine to tune the glyphs to him. Elle is an immortal descendant of a Chinese god of medicine and is hiding to protect her older brother who had his magic stripped from him during a fight with their younger brother. Luc is a highly ranked agent at the agency that does missions for the head of company no matter how much he may not like the mission. His boss has magical control over him and had had him do things he loathes. Luc figures out that Elle is hiding something more than just her power level and even as they slowly become closer things secrets are going to come out on both sides and Elle will have to face what happened in her past with her family.
I really liked this book, the setting felt fresh and didn’t bog itself down with tons of worldbuilding. Just enough to get the story told and leave lots of room for more tales in this setting with either these characters or new people.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley