DNF.
I've underestimated my loathing of everything that messes with your mind. This book is NOT for me. Anything that messes with your head is bad news in MY books, never mind how benign it seems to be.

The writing is lacklustre and overflows with scent print information I could not care less about.

Also - bad parenting. What is it with terrible parents in YA fiction? Why can't we have sane real parents?

I felt too detached to care. Even flipping through did not inspire me to read.

FINAL VERDICT : Better things out there. ( )

Second book to my Asian Readathon Month...This book was amazing, cute, and heartbreaking! It's truly beautiful. What I really loved is to get to know her aunt and that they fixed their relationship even though you know there are still some things for them to figure out. I am loving the ending, this was a cute ending. Even if I kind of saw it coming, I am still so happy! I am definitely going to read more books of Stacey Lee! ( )

I think I'd like contemporary romance a lot better if the hero and heroine didn't always have a falling-out with each other near the end before making up, with the latter happening in only a few pages. I know it's part of the typical contemporary romance recipe, but for me it always destroys most of the feel-good aspect, unless there's a good long fluffy epilogue of them being happy together again (which rarely appears). ( )

Fifteen year old Mim works alongside her mother mixing love potions based on their powerful senses of smell. Due to the affect she has on others and with her future in matchmaking already mapped out, Mim had to beg her mom to let her experience high school, but already her school days are in jeopardy thanks to a boy she isn’t supposed to fall in love with, and a major mix-up on the job that she would prefer her mother doesn’t hear about.

While I sometimes longed for a bit more depth to the characters and their relationships, for the most part I enjoyed them, and many of my favorite scenes involved the romance Mim accidentally falls into, particularly whenever her love interest joined her on her quest to fix her mistake, they shared a really sweet chemistry.

With the jinx, the romance, Mim’s friendship troubles, the disclosure of someone’s sexuality, the love matches, and the strained mother/daughter and sister relationships, the book set in motion many interesting story threads, yet every one of them wrapped up with relative ease, not only did it seem a little unlikely for a character to juggle a zillion problems and have all of them work out so well, I also craved a little more creativity involved in the resolutions.

Still, this is a fun read, I don’t know that I’ve ever read anything where the sense of smell is so heavily woven into the narrative, I so enjoyed the link between scents and emotions, heartache smelling like blueberries, love smelling like butterscotch pudding, etc, it gave the book a unique feel. ( )

i'm not a huge fan of contemporary reads, but i LOVED THIS BOOK SO COMPLETELY. it read almost like a light fantasy, and the complexities of the Mim's word amazed me. along side, the book is filled with wonderfully diverse characters like Kali and Pascha, and who can forget the dreamy Court?

i found Mim very relatable with her awkwardness around other people, and loved learning about how different emotions are scented. this was a fun and light book that made me happier as i read it. Brilliant storywork really helped my usually fantasy-laden brain really love this book.

( )