Blog tour: The Perfumist of Paris

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Welcome to the blog tour for The Perfumist of Paris by Alka Joshi!

More about the book…

Paris, 1974. Radha is now living in Paris with her husband, Pierre, and their two daughters. She still grieves for the baby boy she gave up years ago, when she was only a child herself, but she loves being a mother to her daughters, and she’s finally found her passion—the treasure trove of scents.

She has an exciting and challenging position working for a master perfumer, helping to design completely new fragrances for clients and building her career one scent at a time. She only wishes Pierre could understand her need to work. She feels his frustration, but she can’t give up this thing that drives her.

Tasked with her first major project, Radha travels to India, where she enlists the help of her sister, Lakshmi, and the courtesans of Agra—women who use the power of fragrance to seduce, tease and entice. She’s on the cusp of a breakthrough when she finds out the son she never told her husband about is heading to Paris to find her—upending her carefully managed world and threatening to destroy a vulnerable marriage.

More about the author…

Born in India and raised in the U.S. since she was nine, Alka Joshi has a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from California College of Arts.

Joshi's debut novel, The Henna Artist, immediately became a NYT bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Bookclub pick, was Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and is in development as a TV series.

My impressions…

The Perfumist of Paris is the third book in the Jaipur trilogy, a series I wouldn’t want to say goodbye to. Luckily for me, I haven’t managed to read the first book in the series yet so I will soon get to travel back to the beginning and meet some of these characters again. The sense of place, yet again, is exceptional. I had the pleasure of visiting both Paris and Agra, and I felt like I was there all over again. The characters are richly developed, and human connections are again at the heart of this beautifully narrated story.

Will I read book two and three after catching up with book one? Highly tempting!

Three words to describe it. Beautiful. Exciting. Evocative.

Do I like the cover? Yes, every book in this series has a dreamy cover!

Have I read any other books by the same author? Yes, I have read the second book in the series, The Secret Keeper of Jaipur. The Henna Artist is on my TBR.

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