In the 16th century, a young Italian man, apprentice to the apothecary at a monastery, became Catherine de Medici's personal perfumer. René le Florentin accompanied Catherine when she left her native country to marry a French prince, and spent the next four decades concocting fragrant potions to seduce and delight--and occasionally poisonous ones to rid the queen of her enemies. But René nursed a secret obsession: the quest for a formula to reanimate a person's dying breath, enabling them to live again in another's body.
In present-day France, Jac L'Etoile, perfumer and mythologist, is mourning the death of her brother, Robbie. As she struggles with her grief, Jac takes on one of Robbie's last assignments from a wealthy, eccentric client: She must attempt to mix René le Florentin's unusual formula, the creation of which consumed the Italian artisan. Isolated in a grand château, Jac reaches out to Griffin North, her former lover, to help her unravel the mystery of René's potion and its connection to the château.
M.J. Rose (Seduction, The Book of Lost Fragrances) continues her Reincarnationist series with a twisting plot filled with lush descriptions of French court life and the scents mixed by Jac and René. Jac's frequent hallucinations, in which she glimpses scenes from René's life, sometimes teeter on the edge of believability, but add an interesting paranormal element. The implications of reanimating a dying breath are never fully considered, but the quest makes for a sensual, entertaining tale that mixes perfume, history, passion and revenge. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams