Review: The Perfume Collector

The Perfume Collector

Author: Kathleen Tessaro
Pages: 464
Publisher: Harper
Publication Date: May 14, 2013
Source: Publisher for review

Description from Goodreads:
London, 1955: Grace Monroe is a young newlywed, eager to make a success of her marriage. However, with her intellectual curiosity and her unladylike talent for advanced mathematics, she finds the routine of elegant luncheons and exclusive parties among post-war London’ s social set more tiresome than exciting.

When Grace receives an unexpected inheritance from a woman she’s never met, she finds herself suddenly in Paris, embarking upon a journey to discover not only the identity of her mysterious benefactor but also the hidden secrets of her own past.

In a story that takes us from New York in the 1920s to mid-century Monte Carlo, Paris and London, Grace discovers a world filled with the evocative, intoxicating power of perfume; an obsessive, desperate love between muse and artist; and a trail of dark memories that may mean she isn’ t the person she thinks she is at all.

First Sentence: "Eva d'Orsey sat at the kitchen table, listening to a ticking clock, a copy of Le Figaro in front of her."

Review:

When offered a review copy of The Perfume Collector, I did the same thing I always do first: checked out the Goodreads page to see how the early reviews had fallen. Based on the overwhelmingly positive response, I accepted, despite my crowded review schedule. I'm quite glad I did, as Tessaro's novel is a marvelous read, full of beautiful language and eccentric characters. Set in the post-WWII, Kathleen Tessaro's novel The Perfume Collector is a contemplative tale of one woman's journey to make amends and another woman's journey to find herself.

Grace Munroe lives a rather dull life in the upper crust. She doesn't much care about shopping or parties, preferring intellectual pursuits, and feels a bit lost. Her unease only increases with the suspicion that her husband, Roger, has been conducting an affair. Unsure how to react, she stalls for time, traveling to France to follow up on a mysterious and well-timed missive, informing her of her inheritance from one Eva d'Orsey. What's puzzling is that this Eva is completely unknown to Grace.

The overall plot is, to my mind, entirely predictable. The connection between Grace and Eva is, I think, obvious. There was no shocking reveal or mind-blowing twist. However, I do not see that as a bad thing. Even though the destination is clear, The Perfume Collector is much more about Grace's own mental journey, coming into her own, coming of age, even if she is over thirty, discovering independence for the first time in her life.

Tessaro alternates between Grace's timeline in 1954 and Eva's timeline from the 1920s until her death, slowly weaving them together until all is known. This narrative device is frequently used in historical fiction, but often one of the timelines is much more interesting the other, leaving the reader bored and impatient during the other. Thankfully, in The Perfume Collector, I found both Eva and Grace fascinating in entirely different ways. Though the pace is rather slow, it never flagged, and I was fully engaged throughout.

The characters are well-drawn and all bursting with personality. Grace really does open up in front of the reader's eyes, letting more and more of her true self shine through. I also loved Grace's interactions with her best friend, Mallory, and that, through everything, Mallory was there for her. I rather expected Mallory's character to turn out to be shallow and unreliable, because she's much more into the social scene than Grace, and fiction does that sort of thing, but, no, their friendship is real and delightful. The lawyer, Tissot, too, is a friendly, joking fellow, and probably my personal favorite.

In Eva's sections, the people are brasher, darker, and less likable, but also more compelling. As a young girl, Eva works at a high class hotel in New York City, cleaning up after illustrious and daring personages. She becomes involved with some of these people, and sets her life on a dangerous, exciting course. Grace may live a life of quiet desperation, but Eva's desperation is anything but calm and reserved.

Kathleen Tessaro's The Perfume Collector is a beautiful historical novel about one woman's awakening. Readers who appreciate historical fiction with a focus on women will want to give this one a look.

Rating: 3.5/5

Favorite Quote: "'I want to go to a café and sit with you. I want you to order something I've never eaten before and tease me about it. And I want to walk, anywhere, nowhere in particular, and for us to disagree.'"

Review: Ten Tiny Breaths

Ten Tiny Breaths  
Ten Tiny Breaths, Book 1

Author: K.A. Tucker
Pages: 256
Publisher: Atria Books
Source: Publisher via NetGalley for review

Description from Goodreads:
Four years after losing her parents, best friend, and boyfriend in a drunk driving accident, twenty-year-old Kacey Cleary runs away to begin a new life in Miami. Hardened by the tragedy, she's determined to keep everyone at a distance—until she meets an irresistible and mysterious neighbor who is determined to melt the ice over her heart.

First Sentence: "'Just breathe,' my mom would say."

Review:
Don't tell anyone, but I'm a bit of a softie, and part of me really likes romance novels. I know I talk a big game with my rants about how pointless New Adult is a category, and I still don't subscribe to it, but this is the third supposedly NA novel I've read, and the third I've enjoyed. So there's that. Just keep it under your hat, okay?

What makes Ten Tiny Breaths stand out from generic romance novel fodder is Kacey. She's an amazing, engaging heroine, a far cry from the inexperienced, naive girl to be swept off her feet by a hot, brooding man. Instead, Kacey is violent, emotionally distant, and full of sarcasm and rage. Obviously, I related to her immediately. Kacey's closed off most of her emotions, except for anger, due to the death of her parents, a sister, and her boyfriend in a car accident, caused by drunken college students, which left her with just her sister Livie.

At the opening of Ten Tiny Breaths, Kacey and Livie are fleeing their Aunt's house, after her husband behaved inappropriately toward fifteen-year-old Livie. Kacey, 20, is old enough for custody, but her checkered past (drugs, alcohol, one night stands) prevent her from legally wresting guardianship from her Aunt and Uncle, so the two run away to Miami, Florida, where they move into a cheap apartment complex.

At first, this apartment complex appears disgusting and creepy, but it turns out to be just what Kacey and Livie need to slowly open Kacey up and confront her emotional problems. For example, Kacey's next door neighbor is a stripper named Storm and her daughter, Mia. Initially, Kacey judges Storm for her surgically-enhanced physique and profession, but she quickly learns how much more there is to Storm, and Mia and Storm sneak into her heart. I actually liked Kacey's relationships with the secondary characters more than her romantic relationship. It's always a delight when an author takes time to develop secondary characters, and not just the romantic leads.

Of course, there's also a seriously hot dude in the complex, because duh. Trent comes off as a bit of a manicpixiedreamboy for most of the book, though his character does round out as time goes by. The two do lean towards instalove a bit, but it's not too bad, since they're not actually declaring love. I'll just call it crazy levels of attraction and let that slide...mostly. The part that bothered me was how Trent, without doing anything whatsoever, was always immediately able to lower her walls and obtain Kacey's forgiveness. Not having to work for that was what made the whole thing smack of instalove when it really isn't necessarily. For how closed off she is, that didn't make sense to me, no matter how hot he is or how unique his eyes are.

The other detraction of the novel is that I saw the big twist coming a mile away. I totally called it, and that's generally a bit disappointing. On top of that, I felt like the part where Kacey dealt with her mental issues through therapy was rushed. Obviously, this was done since the intended audience is more interested in the romance than psychotherapy, but I would have appreciated a more realistic arc there. What's there is pretty well done, but I wanted more.

Ultimately, I think Ten Tiny Breaths has quite a few weaknesses from a plot perspective, but I rated up, because I was completely sucked into the book from the very beginning. Garnering an emotional connection from me and making me forget that I'm reading deserve a high rating in my book, flaws aside.

Rating: 4/5

Favorite Quote:

"I cock my head to the side as I take in Storm. 'Did you just call me a sissy girl?'
     She doesn't miss a beat. 'Did you just say "girl bits"? This is an adult club, not a day care.'"

Picking Up the Pieces - Blue October

Something Like Normal

Author: Trish Doller
Pages: 214
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Source: Bloomsbury via NetGalley

Description from Goodreads:
When Travis returns home from a stint in Afghanistan, his parents are splitting up, his brother’s stolen his girlfriend and his car, and he’s haunted by nightmares of his best friend’s death. It’s not until Travis runs into Harper, a girl he’s had a rocky relationship with since middle school, that life actually starts looking up. And as he and Harper see more of each other, he begins to pick his way through the minefield of family problems and post-traumatic stress to the possibility of a life that might resemble normal again. Travis’s dry sense of humor, and incredible sense of honor, make him an irresistible and eminently lovable hero.

First Sentence: "At the end of the concourse I can see a few kids from the high school marching band playing the 'Marines' Hymn' and a couple old guys—their blues straining at the waist—acting as an unofficial color guard."

Review:
There are some subjects that I avoid like the plague, and current politics tops the list. A subset of that is anything about the US' resent wars, both Afghanistan and Iraq. Were it not for my challenge with myself to read as many Apocalypsies books as I can, I definitely would not have picked this one up. Let me just say that I would seriously have been missing out.

Something Like Normal is about a Marine deployed in Afghanistan, but Doller manages to avoid any preaching on the war itself, either negative or in endorsement. This book isn't about the political side of the war; it's about the emotions. Told from Travis' perspective, Something Like Normal is not intended to capture the truth of the war as a whole, but merely to highlight its effect on one person.

In the opening scene, Travis has just arrived home on leave, a mandated, extended leave to allow him to deal with his problems dealing with his best friend's death. Travis is not the kind of guy that I like in real life, and he's not the typical YA hero. He's flawed, even a bit of an asshole. His gut instinct is to violence, he makes too many decisions with his dick, and he doesn't recognize that his mother is just as trapped in their family as he is. I mean, if you told me that I would read a book and sympathize with a guy who hooked up with his ex-girlfriend (now his brother's girlfriend) while flirting with a wonderful girl, then I would have told you that you were insane.

Still, that's precisely what happened. Something about the writing really made everything feel so real. I got completely sucked into Travis' narration. Despite my disgust for his behavior much of the time, I couldn't help being right there with him. The writing is not ornate, not the typical style I most appreciate, but it fits Travis perfectly: blunt, slightly crude, occasionally funny, and fairly intelligent. The other aspect of the writing that made this work was how reserved, distant, and cold Travis' narration felt most of the time, the exceptions being time spent with Harper or with his marine buddies when you can feel him come alive.

Harper. I have to talk about her. I just love her, even if she made choices I never would have made. She's a completely wonderful girl, and Travis doesn't deserve her. I think she knows that, but she's been in love with him for ages and she's going to get what she wants, just like she'll find a way to pay her way through college. She is such a caring soul, shown both in her treatment of her father and of Travis. Though she may lash out initially, she always ends up doing the right thing. I have so much respect for her as a character.

Another amazing character that I really have to talk about is Travis' mom. Rarely will you see a parent lauded in a YA book review, but I really liked her. She's so completely a mom all the way through, with the care packages, the smothering hug on arrival, the clothing she chose for him, and her projects to try to help out her son's cause. At first, she seems a weak character, controlled by her jerk of a husband, but there's so much more to her. I loved watching her and Travis learn to support and understand one another, brought together through the magic of beer. In fact, the quote I chose for this book is one that struck a chord with me, because it's so like my own relationship with my mother.

There is just so much life in this novel. Part of that stems from the fact that nothing has been romanticized. Doller isn't trying to show the great American hero; she's trying to show a teenager forced to grow up much too fast and coming apart at the seems. The teens in this novel certainly do things that some parents will not want their precious snowflakes to read, but everything feels authentic.  It made me cry, it made me angry, it gave me hope, it made me think, and it made me laugh, all many times over.

Despite the hype (I've yet to see a review of this that isn't a rave), I was in no way let down with this novel. Skeptics, have no fear of the subject matter, Something Like Normal is a book you'll want to read. I was scarcely able to put it down, and, when I did, I was immediately sucked back into its emotional vortex the moment I resumed reading.

Rating: 5/5

Favorite Quote:  

"'Do you need some help?' she asks.
'I can do it.'
The corners of her mouth pull up in a tiny smile. 'You've always been this way.'
'Like what?'
'Independent,' she says. 'Stubborn. As soon as you could talk, your answer for everything was "Me do it" and you'd get angry is I tried to help you. Even then you were trying to get away from me.'"

"I really need to talk with you
I keep stepping on the vein
That keeps my lifeline flowing through
I wanna be your perfect stick of glue
But I don't feel perfect at all
Sad and insecure flaw

I find it hard to hold conversations
I get sweaty sick and I wanna walk away
No, it's not you it's strictly me in this situation
I'm wondering will it ever go away...just go away, still

Sometimes I feel like weeping
Awake and when I'm sleeping
Perfecting how to put a game face on

This puzzle I've been keeping
Has been in hiding creeping out the closet door
Spilling out onto the floor

How long will I be picking up pieces
How long will I be picking up my heart

Listen...
I'll be as honest as I feel
I'm getting more paranoid and I'm hearing things
And they never turn out real
It feels like my heart is made of pure steel
It's just so heavy all the time

Yea I'm scared of death
And I'm scared of living
I gave up on the past cause it's unforgiving
I misplaced my trust

I watched my word begin to rust
I'm a balloon about to bust
I need a place for reliving"

Not the Same - Ben Folds

Next to Love

Author: Ellen Feldman
Pages: 320
ARC Acquired from: Random House via NetGalley

Description from Goodreads:
It’s 1941. Babe throws like a boy, thinks for herself, and never expects to escape the poor section of her quiet Massachusetts town. Then World War II breaks out, and everything changes. Her friend Grace, married to a reporter on the local paper, fears being left alone with her infant daughter when her husband ships out; Millie, the third member of their childhood trio, now weds the boy who always refused to settle down; and Babe wonders if she should marry Claude, who even as a child could never harm a living thing. As the war rages abroad, life on the home front undergoes its own battles and victories; and when the men return, and civilian life resumes, nothing can go back to quite the way it was.

From postwar traumas to women’s rights, racial injustice to anti-Semitism, Babe, Grace, and Millie experience the dislocations, the acute pains, and the exhilaration of a society in flux. Along the way, they will learn what it means to be a wife, a mother, a friend, a fighter, and a survivor. Beautiful, startling, and heartbreaking, Next to Love is a love letter to the brave women who shaped a nation’s destiny.

First Sentence: "In the year and a half Babe Huggins has worked for Western Union, she has been late only once before."

Review:
Next to Love is much larger in scope than I anticipated, again because I tend to avoid reading blurbs in full, since they occasionally have spoilers. Anyway, I expected this to be a novel about WWII, and certainly that's a big chunk of it, but, even more, this is a story about war and its effect on families, especially women.

The novel tells the story of three different women, friends, Babe, Grace and Millie. All three get married before their husbands ship off to fight in Europe. These women are all different in their situations, their motivations and their expectations. Two of them do not get their husbands back; one does. One can recover from her husband's loss; one cannot. Even the woman who got her husband back discovered that just because he returned, it does not mean he is the same man that you married years before.

The perspective of these women waiting at home is entirely engrossing to me. They get jobs, do their part in the war effort, knowing, whether they will it or not, that they will have to give up their new found independence when the men come home. The whole concept of war brides, of all of the marriages that take place as men are about to set out for war, is entirely absurd to me. I mean, I get the desire for closeness and comfort, but the men are going to come back so completely different, and, in most cases, the courtship is so rushed they hardly knew one another in the first place.

Once the war ends, Feldman treats us to a view of post-war America, incorporating the fight for civil rights and the effects of WWII upon the next generation. The women's kids are now old enough to be dating and getting married and holding down jobs, and they are so completely messed up. The loss of their fathers or the mother's reaction to his loss is something that affects them permanently, or so it seems.

Next to Love is not a happy story. Actually, it left me rather emotionally ravaged at several points. Both of my favorite characters are raped (one instance might not be, but it was definitely in the date rape family). Even the most solid relationships have serious issues that never really get resolved. This is not a book to read when you're hoping to be uplifted.

What I love about WWII historical fiction is how many tales there are to tell, and, many as I've read, I still learn something new in every book. Next to Love makes a wonderful addition to this category, especially because of its focus upon the role of women.

Rating: 4/5

Favorite Quote: " 'The official line is that, after the war, women couldn't wait to leave the offices and assembly lines and government agencies. But the real story was that the economy couldn't have men coming home without women going home, not unless it wanted a lot of unemployed vets. So the problem became unemployed women. "How you gonna keep us down on the farm after we've seen the world,"' she ad-libs to the old World War I tune. 'Enter the women's magazines, and cookbook publishers, and all these advertising agencies carrying on about the scourge of germs in the toilet bowl, and scuffs on the kitchen floor, and, my favorite, house B.O. Enter chicken hash that takes two and a half hours to prepare. I can just hear them sitting around the conference tables. "That'll keep the gals out of trouble."' "

"You see 'em drop like flies from the bright sunny skies
They come knocking at your door with this look in their eyes
You've got one good trick and you're hanging on you're hanging on...
To it"

Will I? from RENT

Ashes
Ashes Trilogy, Book 1

Author: Ilsa J. Bick
Pages: 480
ARC Acquired from: Egmont USA via NetGalley

Brief Summary:
Alex has a monster in her head, a brain tumor that has stolen her senses of smell and taste, along with her memories. Desperate to get away from all of the pitying and relieved (that it's her and not them) glances, she decides that before she's dead, she needs to make the trip to spread her parents' ashes (yeah, her parents died just before the tumor was discovered...this girl just can't catch a break) on Lake Superior. While hiking through the mountains, she meets a grandfather and granddaughter (her parents are dead too). They share a repast and then share some serious pain, as some sort of "zap" attacks their brains. This kills the grandfather, injures Ellie and her dad's dog Mina, and seems to fix Alex's brain, along with giving her a super sense. Now, only really old technology works and Alex has to figure out how to keep herself and this snotty girl alive in the face of some mysterious calamity that seems to have turned most teenagers into cannibals...

Review:
Let me begin by pointing out that I have read only amazing reviews of Ashes. Pretty much every blogger I follow raved about its complete awesomeness. Unfortunately, I did not find myself so much in love with it. The story was interesting and, by the end, I was definitely interested in what was going to happen. I even plan on reading the sequel to Ashes, because I cannot just let the story end where it did. Warning: the ending is seriously abrupt. Can you say cliffhanger?

Although I feel really sad for Alex and was exceedingly happy to see her healed, I never really liked her or connected with her. This is really weird, because she definitely knows how to take care of herself and kick ass when she has to, meaning that she's just the kind of heroine I generally love. In some ways, she reminds me of Trella from Inside Out and Outside In, bruised and not trusting. Alex's coldness, though, stems from the fact that she could die at any moment. Why get close to someone when you're only going to leave them or be left by them because they can't stand to watch you die? While I totally get that and would probably be the exact same way, it still makes her hard to get close to even as a reader, for me at least.

Her romances, too, were rather tough for me to accept, what with her being so closed off. There was no guy that I shipped her with and no relationship that seemed like it would pan out in the end. In fact, they seemed borne of stress, fear and proximity. One romance even struck me as little short of Stockholm Syndrome.

Since I don't want to spoil anything, I'm going to be kind of vague about what happened to create the crazy post-apocalyptic world in Ashes. Let's just say that it was pretty stellar. The fact that the event, the "zap" affected people's brains in different ways definitely intrigues me as well. However, I had trouble dealing with teens turning into people eaters. It seemed to lessen the credibility and seriousness of the novel.

What creeped me out in a more believable way was the way that normal people reacted to this calamity, which killed off everyone in middle age and turned most youths into cannibals, leaving only the elderly, young children and a few teens like Alex to keep the world going. These aspects were close to being Witheresque, what with their only being a few women of reproductive age. Plus, with limited resources come unlimited conflicts with other folks only trying to survive just like you are. Mostly, I just feel like the cannibalistic adolescents were unnecessary.

Even though I didn't love this, I do want to know more. Maybe Bick can convince me in book two. Before writing this one off because of my opinion, definitely check out some other reviews, like this one over at Presenting Lenore.

"Will I lose my dignity?
Will someone care?
Will I wake tomorrow
From this nightmare?"