I’m a sucker for well written historical novels and Kathleen Tessaro’s latest offering The Perfume Collector? Doesn’t disappoint and has me checking my Amazon gift card balance to see if there’s enough left to snap The Perfume Collector up before the Kindle Daily Deal ends at midnight.

Like Kathleen Tessaro’s previous historical novel (The Debutante), The Perfume Collector tells the tales of two women separated by a generation. In post World War II England, lovely Grace Munroe should be happy but her marriage is crumbling and her future feels as bleak as her empty womb. Her husband? Tom-catting about with a slinky society beauty who doesn’t realize married means “hands off”. One day, Grace receives a letter from a French lawyer about an inheritance and decides to throw off her suffocating life and go to Paris to find out what the letter means. After all, who does Grace even know in Paris? A generation earlier, an orphaned French teen-age girl begins to work at a posh hotel until one guest changes her life forever.

Now even the stuffed dragons and I figured out the plot twist about 20 pages in. Maybe because we read a lot of trashy and less well written books? Or have low minds? Who knows. (No, am I not going to tell you the plot twist. Pick up the darn book and figure it out yourself.) A lesser writer would handle the plot twist in a much more ham-fisted manner (coughcoughAnnoyingAuthorcoughcough). But how Kathleen Tessaro unveils the plot twist is delicate and intriguing and engages the reader. Finishing The Perfume Collector, you might (okay, once again I) wanted to race off to the best perfume counter you can find and discover a scent as enchanting as Madame Eva d’Orsey concocted. The only thing holding me back? This silly trifle called rent… <sighs>

So snap up The Perfume Collector, make a nice lovely hot cup of tea and settle in for a good read!