If you took Patrick
Suskind’s ‘Perfume’ and mixed it with Alice Hoffman’s, well, any of her books,
you might come up with ‘Season of the Dragonflies’. In the 1920s, on a tropical
island, Serena Lenore discovers a magical variety of gardenia, which not only
smells divine but also amplifies a woman’s talents and gives her… something…
that allows her to succeed beyond all others. Through the decades this perfume
has been shared, secretly and profitably, with a very few women in all
different trades. There are a few rules that Serena handed down; one was to
never, ever alter the secret formula. The sales of this perfume has made the
Lenore family fabulously wealthy, although they live without conspicuous
consumption and put a lot of money into philanthropy.
Willow has run the company alone for decades. When one of her
daughters,Mya – who was the assumed heir to the company- goes behind her back
and makes a deal with a client that blows up, the entire operation is in danger
of failing. And when she performs some dark magic to repair things, it gets
even worse. Can the recently divorced Lucia, who never had any magic in her and
had no talent for mixing scents, help her mother and sister?
During the
book, things change dramatically for all three Lenore women. Their roles
change, their relationships change, even their talents change. It’s a time of
growth for them; sometimes very painful growth. It’s also a time of learning to
let go and trust the universe.
The story is
well written enough although it does have a little bit of ‘first novelism’ in
places- mainly in the romances. All three women find themselves involved with
men who are almost too good to be true; it’s always hard for me to accept
characters that have no flaws and when three of them appear in the same book
it’s unbelievable- but then, this book *does* have magic as a reality in it, so
perhaps this can be forgiven. The other thing I found a bit difficult was how
easily the three women accepted the changes- major changes- in their lives.
Still, I enjoyed the book a great deal and look forward to more by this author.
I received this book from the Amazon Vine program in return for a fair review.
The above is an affiliate link; if you click through and buy something Amazon will give me a few cents.
Neither of these things affected my review.
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