I can’t. The girl is literally psychotic.

What the heck did I just listen to….??? Overall it was interesting and kept my attention, but holy crap was it bizarre and disturbing, after halfway or 2/3 of the way thru.

This had the potential to be a really great story, but it was so much work to get thru, it was kind of like trying to run in a lake - just treading water - when it could have been more focused and less ambiguous to let me be invested.

I was so interested in the concept of Hollywood and “enemy aliens” from other countries in the US during WW2 but the way this unfolded was just so unfocused, and overly done. It would start to tell a little of the story - enough for me to get interested - and then do a massive rabbit trail of a random character’s backstory, side story, future story, etc. and do it in a poetic and philosophical way that was just work to read. It didn’t lend to the story, just drew it out and was distracting so that when we finally got back to it I had to then work to get my bearings back on where I was at again.

Very interesting and immersive. It was slow moving but still kept your attention, wanting to follow Sayuri’s story. I did feel like she was fairly selfish the way she consistently disregarded Nobu’s kindnesses, and didn’t seem to be aware of anyone else’s feelings or care about them like Pumpkin. Her character annoyed me a bit with her lack of self awareness and loyalty.

The book was fairly predictable and didn’t have much mystery to it, which I don’t know that it was meant to do, but I started losing interest in it quickly without it. It was an interesting glimpse into a small period of Grace Kelly’s transition from being a star to being a princess from Sophie’s, the fictional perfumer’s point of view.

The description and detail of the smells and world Sophie lived in were lovely. I’ll be honest though, I didn’t care for Sophie’s character much. For a female business owner in the 50’s I find it hard to believe she’d be successful when she had very little spine with her personal and business relationships. She avoided confrontation, she wasn’t honest if it would potentially cause conflict, she didn’t fight for much other than her shop, and even that was only if it was easy and without personal conflict (eg: confrontation that was needed with her mother, boyfriend, buyer etc). I didn’t care for the ending in that respect either. The characters just let things happen to them. They didn’t fight for each other when they had ample opportunity without an enormous amount of effort until the very end, and only when it was convenient.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Very cute and hallmark-movie-ish. Loved the heartfelt, working thru difficult things and vulnerability situation, and fighting for who you love. Was a little annoying how flip-flopping Victoria was but overall it was hard to put down.

A little superficial and predictable but an easy and interesting read. There wasn’t a lot of depth to it and moved too fast to be believable but I didn’t hate it.