The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister

The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister – 320 pages

ARC provided by St. Martins and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Book Blurb:

Emmeline lives an enchanted childhood on a remote island with her father, who teaches her about the natural world through her senses. What he won’t explain are the mysterious scents stored in the drawers that line the walls of their cabin, or the origin of the machine that creates them. As Emmeline grows, however, so too does her curiosity, until one day the unforeseen happens, and Emmeline is vaulted out into the real world–a place of love, betrayal, ambition, and revenge. To understand her past, Emmeline must unlock the clues to her identity, a quest that challenges the limits of her heart and imagination.

My Review: 4 stars

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The Scent Keeper was a pure delight and awakening of the senses. In The School for Essential Ingredients and Joy for Beginners, Bauermeister tickled our taste buds with tantalizing descriptions of food and wine while creating relatable storylines. Now, as the title suggests, she’s conjured up a way to write a beautiful story that wraps itself around the power and poetry of scent.

Although scent is the underlying theme in the book, it’s also very much about mother/daughter relationships, father/daughter relationships, abandonment, abuse, alcoholism, bullying, friendship, romance, lies and forgiveness. The writing read like poetry as scents were dissected and expressed with detail and emotion. Words were used to describe scents that I’d never thought to use and their association with color was a new way of thinking for me.

The characters, all so convincing, were well crafted. Especially Henry and Collette. Oh, how I loved their work ethic, grace and compassionate lifestyle. Fisher’s story broke my heart repeatedly and naive Emmeline, although mislead for much of her life, still got the best from each of her parents. Her way of mirroring fairytales to real life situations was a testament to the power of storytelling.

The scent industry is alive and well and much to my surprise I’m now picking up on scents while I shop. There were parts of the book that moved slower than I’d have liked, and it was then that I wanted to slap Emmeline and just tell her to talk, don’t be scared, this is taking too long! Overall, I would definitely recommend this to readers looking for something a little different. Book clubs should definitely consider this title for discussion.

Quotes I liked:

I wanted to crawl inside the comfort of this bread and stay there forever.”

“I remember the way the rain seemed to talk the roof as I fell asleep and the fire would snap and tell it to be quiet.”

“It had ripped the fabric of what made us two and now we were not even one plus one.”

“Never trust a smile that doesn’t make it to their eyes.”

“Smells hold memories. For just a moment they let you travel through time.”