This book had so many feels. Love, loss, hope, fear, adventure, romance, heartache. I loved the characters. I loved the settings. I loved the story. I'd recommend this book to anyone who loved "Where the Crawdads Sing" or "The Great Alone".

I went into reading The Scent Keeper completely blind, but I loved the writing of it so much! Right away, I knew that I would love this book. The literary feel, the somewhat magical realism elements that I love, and the rich story of Emmeline as a child to her coming of age as a woman, all drew me in.

I'm very affected by scents and so I loved the idea of a story based on a family that had exceptional olfactory skills.

The Scent Keeper is broken into 3 main parts

Part 1: The Island
The beginning was so mysterious for me. Why were Emmeline and her father on an island? Where was the island? Why did the father keep so many papers with scents on them? So many questions! It was part magical and part sadness.

Part 2: Change
When Emmeline goes to the mainland, there was a feeling of overwhelming sadness and uncertainty. Fitting for the storyline. This is probably my least favorite part of the story but important as it sets up for Part 3

Part 3: Becoming
My favorite part of Emmeline's journey! Where she goes, what she learns and how she evolves. Very satisfying!

A lovely, magical tale well worth the time.

I'll admit that I set this one down the first time I picked it up, several years ago. I thought it was historical fiction – with maybe a touch of fantasy? – and it's not that at all. Once I got over my expectations, this was a delightful read. It feels like a fairy tale in the opening section, but it soon shifts and becomes the coming-of-age story of a young, sheltered girl who doesn't know her own story. I thought it was a clever concept with lovely writing, and I found the plot very moving. I So Enjoyed It.

I ended up reading this book as part of my book club. While I enjoyed the concept of a young girl who is blessed by a keen sense of smell and it greatly impacts her view and communication of the world. I did not enjoy the writing style of the author. The scent descriptions were beautiful but I did not love the rest of the setting. I also felt that the final part of the book in the city moved very quickly with very little resolution. It felt like we were rushing to the end and then the epilogue left you wanting more and with more questions. 2.5/5 stars.

Very abrupt, unsatisfying ending. I wanted to see a full circle back to the cove and know what happened with Fisher. I guess that romance was secondary to Emmeline’s relationship with both parents. I also would have liked to know more about what caused her father’s mental illness (depression?) and why he chose to lie to her. Was it spite against Victoria, that he didn’t think she deserved her daughter? There was too much left unresolved.

On the plus side, it’s poetic, magical, metaphorical...like a real-life fairy tale. The scents that destroyed life faded, but the memories remained (in the final burning). Is the message that memories are evoked with all the senses, but smell is the most powerful?

I received a complimentary ARC of this book from St. Martin’s Press through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

I was completely mesmerized by this novel. Such an unexpected surprise. In The Scent Keeper I found the description of the places and smells so descriptive, taking me on a magical trip I didn’t know I needed. The journey that Emmeline, the protagonist, went on brought out all the emotions! I adored the older couple, Collette and Henry, that took Emmeline in after a tragedy. The novel brought up the memories we hold associated with smell, whether happy, sad, reminders of years past.

I can’t recommend this novel enough! Get yourself a copy & clear your schedule.

Thanks to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for this ebook! All thoughts are my own.

Such a brilliantly woven novel! The opening sounds like a parallel fantasy world created by the author, but as the novel unfolds, and the mystery of the scent papers and the scent catcher is revealed, you realize just how easy it can be to create a world of wonder and delight, and how difficult it is to hold on to that delight in the "real" world. This is a beautiful story of love and loss and finding the truth and finding yourself. Highly recommended!

Emmeline grows up on a deso,ate island with her father until tragedy happens forcing her to move into the real world and question her parentage. Emmelines father was a master scent keeper who has handed his trade down to his daughter. This however was Emmelines object of ridicule in high school but earns her good money in later years. Did not connect well with the characters.

BOOK REVIEW:

The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister was a very unique novel and an interesting read. It is told in three parts:

PART ONE: This coming-of-age novel begins with a child, Emmeline, living in a cabin on a small and very remote island in the American northwest with her father. They are the only human inhabitants of the island. As she grows older, she discovers that occasionally a boat arrives in a cove on the island and leaves items. (The weather must be just right and this can only happen at certain times of the year.). Up until her discovery, Emmeline has been told by her father that mermaids leave the items at the cove. And she easily believes this—for this is her world. It is a happy world despite the remoteness and she is a secure, happy, and loved child.

She is raised to know that they must forage and grow their own food during the warmer seasons in order to survive the winters. They heat their home with wood that needs to be chopped. As you can gather by the title, scent is an important plot element and theme running through the novel.

Emmeline’s father teaches her about the natural world through her senses. Her father has a mysterious device (similar to an old Polaroid camera) that captures and preserves scents, and he has scents stored in drawers that line the walls of their cabin. The scents are tied into memories.

Here is an excerpt from this portion of the book:

“I don’t remember arriving on the island myself; I was too young. I only remember living there. I remember the paths that wandered through those watchful trees, the odor of the dirt beneath our feet, as dark and complicated as fairy tales. I remember our one-room cabin, the big chair by the woodstove, and our collection of stories and science books. I remember the smell of wood smoke and pine pitch in my father’s beard as he read to me at night, and the ghostly aroma of the runaway’s pipe tobacco, an olfactory reminder that had sunk into the walls and never quite disappeared. I remember the way the rain seemed to talk to the roof as I fell asleep, and how the fire would snap and tell it to be quiet.”

PART TWO: One day, when she is 12 years old, Emmeline is forced out into the real world beyond the sanctuary of her island. Her beloved father dies, and the contact that had brought things to the island a couple of times a year realizes something is wrong and rescues her and takes her back to live with he and his wife in a small coastal community. They run a small summer business of vacation rooms/cottages, and he fishes and does cargo runs. They are childless, and prove to be wonderful surrogate parents for Emmeline. Her adaptation to a world with things she has never been around like people and phones and hot and cold running water is spotty however. She is happy with the couple and makes a friend of a nearby boy her age named Fisher, but she never fits in at school, despite her intelligence and knowledge (she was well educated in terms of science and other subjects by her father), because she did not grow knowing how to socialize with others. And children can be cruel. She loves summers helping with her foster parent’s summer business, but hates attending school. From the book:

“The kids threw the rumors out like lit matches, to see what would catch. I stayed silent, listening to the fizz and spark of their words, pretending I was water, putting them out.”

“It was the happiest I had been since the time I believed in fairy tales and my father was my hero. I did my best not to remember that I would have to go back to school. But as with all things I tried to ignore, fall came too soon. I stepped out of Colette’s truck that first day of classes, and it was as if a tide receded around me, leaving me exposed once again.

I had hoped that the summer might temper the kids’ desire to torment me, but when that didn’t happen I tried to make myself small, unremarkable. I learned to keep my curls short, my eyes down. I never went in the cafeteria, and I avoided the bathroom at all costs.

I crossed off each school day on my calendar, and threw it away in June.

Summer. School. Summer. School. Time and tide moving in and out with the years. I was fifteen, then sixteen.

The bullying never changed, although the methods did. The ubiquity of technology had found its way even to our little edge of the world. Some of the kids had gotten cell phones, and rumors and teasing, once the domain of notes and whispers, could now travel at lightning speed. I would sit at my desk and watch their fingers, tapping underneath their desks. Feel the insults flickering through the air.”

PART THREE: As she grows older, Emmeline begins to wonder who her father was, and why he sought out their remote life on the island. And she wonders if she has or had a mother. She is able to discover some information on the internet on the computer in the library at school. (Students who don’t fit in love the library. I nurtured many in my career.).

As graduation age nears, she and her friend Fisher eventually return to her childhood island briefly, and then he leaves to seek a new life in the city after a rift with his dysfunctional father. Emmeline eventually follows him to the city (they have lost touch) and searches for Fischer and her mother. And she must get used to yet another world.

One last excerpt from this portion of the book just because it is such beautiful writing:

“We went back outside and sat on the dilapidated deck, leaning against the wall of the cabin, looking out at the canal. For a long time, we were quiet. The sky still held the light of late summer, and I could hear rustling from the boats around us, men’s voices, the sounds of cooking and settling in. In the houses that lined the channel, illuminated windows held small moments, like the open doors of an Advent calendar. A woman walking back and forth, a baby in her arms. A couple sitting at a table. A boy playing with a dog. All those stories, all those lives, each one an entire world to the person living it, and yet I knew none of them. Maybe that’s how it always is, I thought—we all just go along, catching glimpses of one another, thinking we know everything.”

This was a unique and thought-provoking novel beautifully written and I highly recommend it. Thank you St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader’s Copy of the book, and for allowing me to so tardily review it. (Publication date 21 May 2019)

This ended up bing a DNF for me. I tried several times to read this book but was not able to get involved in the story or find myself interested in the characters.

This will go down as one of the best books I read all year. I am recommending it to all my "Crawdads" fans as it is of the same great story-telling genre. It made me want to run to a perfumery and smell and bask in the fragrances. It was a well-crafted story and I can't wait to read more by this author.

The Scent Keeper was a very good experience. It gives you family, intrigue, love. I really enjoyed reading it and was sad when it was over.

I really enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. I liked the characters, the bit of mystery and the talking/learning about scents and how they effect people didn't scare me off as I thought it might. In the end this book just made me feel warm and fuzzy. Just like the perfect Fall day.

What a magical novel. From the first page, Bauermeister's writing has such an enchanting feel. I love going into a story without remembering why I added it to my to-read list. So I went into this with very little information on the story itself, plus this was my first time reading anything from this author.
Although it was slow-paced, I was thoroughly engrossed in every portion of the story and finished it within two days. Each character is well-developed and easy to connect with. The idea that we could isolate scent memories just as we do visual memories was brilliant, and I love how throughout the story, Emmeline's emotions were attached to scents around her. There is something very real and grounding about a story taking you into an attachment to emotions like that. That is the way I process emotions, so it makes the writing that much more consuming. It allows the reader to truly be there with Emmeline, wrapped up in her memories, wrapped up in the senses she's experiencing. Wow. I enjoyed that part very much.

This is a beautifully written novel but I found it almost unremittingly miserable. However, the riveting story, sympathetic characters and luminous descriptions made up for that! I am not sure if I would read it again, though, but I will read some of Erica Bauermeister"s other books.

The story concerns Emmeline who lives an idyllic life with her father on a deserted Canadian island, fascinated by his scent machine and his magical bottles of scents. Her life is full of secrets, however. After a huge tragedy strikes, Emmeline is taken in by a lovely couple, but she is bullied at school. She meets Fisher there, a kindly boy and neighbour who helps her. In this coming-of-age story, Emmeline's urge to discover her secrets grows stronger, but will she lose herself along the way?

It's certainly a great first novel, and the characters are so real, I really wanted to see what happened! I recommend it for anyone who likes atmospheric and insightful romantic stories. I would love to see a movie of it.

I received this free ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

A beautifully written book that is a perfect beach or vacation read.
This book starts off with Emmeline and her father living on a secluded island, the location undisclosed. It’s just the two of them, they have always lived there. Their life is filled with the beautiful pleasentries that is island living. Emmeline’s father is a scent collector, he has an almost magical-like contraption that would take moments, objects and such, capture it then print out the scent onto a slip of paper. Her father would then gather the scent or what he would like to call it as a memory, put them in a glass bottle and seal the scent forevermore. Never to be opened. As Emmeline grows older she begins to question why her father does this? Why is it important? She questions where they live and all the reasons their life is the way it is.



“Scents were like rain, or birds. They left and came back.” –The Scent Collector by Erica Bauermeister

In this tale of coming of age and finding hidden truths, The Scent Keeper by Erica Baermeister is an actual lyrical masterpiece. Her beautiful details of scents and how it triggers memories, it speaks to a deep part of the reader’s mind, it makes one long for memories that spark the scent that triggers us as well. The Scent Keeper was so lovely,whimsical, but also filled with moments of empowerment and courage. Emmeline finds the courage to be herself fully and stand on two feet, to forgive the mistakes of her past and walk with love.

Erica Bauermeister excels in writing with palpable feeling, you can feel the despair of the characters, you can smell the salt water in the air. The Scent Keeper is almost an ironic experience for me as the reader. Just as the father became obsessed with keeping his scents safe and sealed, I wish to keep this novelty to myself, and crack this book open when I need it to heal me.

“We sat in silence, letting the green in the air heal what it could.”- The Scent Collector by Erica Bauermeister

I give The Scent Collector by Erica Buaermeister 4 Stars. It has so many elements that kept me entertained and invested. It gives you the sense of mystery, as Emmeline searches for the truth. This book gives you angst and hope with the romance sprinkled in it. It also moved and inspired me as the coming of age and finding your voice aspect made me feel all the feels.



If you love books that make the reader sit back and unfold a beautiful story chapter by chapter, I strongly recommend The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister.

We are carriers of our parents secrets. Emmelines father broke her trust. She lived with her father on an island. Emmelines father was her world. The beauty of the island was raw and deadly. They collected bottles of scent paper. They raised chickens for eggs and ate fruits and vegetables. Sometimes they caught clams. The scent papers were memories. Emmeline is not as safe as she once felt.I liked emmeline and wanted to see how her story would unfold. The pacing of the story was good.

God, what a great read. As someone who has keen sense of smell and can be deeply affected by smells, this was like coming home. Evocative, lyrical and perfect.

I remember seeing so much buzz about this book, and because of that I figured I had to read it. It looked so promising and was getting rave reviews from critics - but unfortunately, I think all the hype surrounding it led it to become a bit of a letdown...

Though original and fascinating, something about this book was so hard for me to get through. The writing was beautiful, but my brain was just so bored. There was nothing from keeping me wanting to continue it other than the fact that I refuse to not finish a book.

I would still recommend it because like I said, it was beautifully written and very original - it just wasn't for me. Literally, this took me months to finish and I can read a book in a day *cries*