What if the primal ability to vividly remember a grandmother’s tenderness with a dollop of cold cream, or childhood summers with a handful of crushed flower stems, was just the tip of the iceberg? What if a scent had the power to spark past life memories?
In The Book of Lost Fragrances, the heir of a centuries-old French perfume house discovers an ancient perfume bottle that may have housed exactly that — and promptly vanishes with it, leaving a dead body in his wake. His sister Jac, a gifted nose plagued by scent-triggered hallucinations since her mother’s death, must face the olfactory perils of the family workshop to find clues to his whereabouts. But even as Jac dismisses the possibility of her brother’s find, his trail whispers with an elusive, unnameable scent that sparks visions of ancient Egypt and the French Revolution. Jac begins to wonder if her demons might be memories after all.
The Book of Lost Fragrances, by suspense-novelist M. J. Rose, is easy to get lost in…
