The Perfumist of Paris

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I'm jumping in on this, the third book in the trilogy. I didn't have any real difficulty reading this as a stand-alone work, but I think there's a lot of good story in the first two books that I should go discover. If you haven't read any of the three, start at the beginning with The Henna Artist.

Radha and Pierre are married, living and working in Paris, raising their two daughters. Radha loves her work at the House of Yves with master perfumer Delphine, and hopes to one day become a master perfumer herself. Pierre struggles with his wife's career. It's the 1970s. Women working isn't a given, and he doesn't understand why she can't be content just staying home to be a wife and mother. His mother, Florence, is also a bit of a thorn in Radha's side. She worries that Florence wants to make her girls completely French, to take their Indian heritage away from them.

Radha receives an important assignment at work – her first solo project! Work on the project has her returning to India, where her sister Lakshmi gets her in to visit the courtesans of Agra, to learn their secrets of using scent to seduce and entice. Lakshmi also tells Radha that Niki, the baby Radha gave up for adoption when she was just thirteen years old, knows she is connected to him somehow and is heading for Paris to learn why.

Alka Joshi paints wonderful word pictures of her characters and the settings. And her descriptions of different scents almost made the book like smell-0-vision. I could easily imagine the scents Radha discovered on her trip back to India.

The characters are wonderful and sometimes infuriating. Sometimes my heart just ached for Radha and the burden she carried, the secret she kept from Pierre, and sometimes I wanted to shout, “But how much of this could have been avoided if y'all would just TALK to each other?!” That being said, I've never given a child up for adoption. It's easy for me to say but of course I'd tell my husband about it. But honestly, would I? I don't know.

It took me a minute to really get sucked in to the story, but the more I read, the more I liked. There were some surprises that I didn't expect, and they turned out to be marvelous. This is the kind of book where I felt like I was saying good-bye to friends when I finished. And as an adoptee who's found my own birth family, I could totally relate to Niki. The biggest difference is that I always knew I was adopted, and it was never a big secret. I can't imagine finding out like Niki did.

Betrayal by a trusted friend, women's rights, the sacrifices we make to balance work and life, lost love and family found, this book has it all. It's a five-star read for me.

Stop by my blog to read an excerpt: https://theplainspokenpen.com/book-review-excerpt-and-blog-tour-the-perfumist-of-paris-the-jaipur-trilogy-3-by-alka-joshi/