The story explores the meaning of home and family through a series of broken relationships, fairy tales, and concealed truths. Beginning with a father & daughter on an isolated island off the coast of Washington and an obsession with scents and fairy tales. The obsession leads to disaster, and Emmaline (the daughter) is taken in by an elderly couple who own a remote resort.

After spending her first 13 years in social isolation, Emmaline struggles. She comes to love the couple and their dog, whose reliance on scents helps her to integrate her experiences. School is a more difficult social problem for her. Her classmate, Fisher, is also an outsider in the school and they establish a relationship based on that. He helps her to read facial expressions human behavior.

They try to escape their unhappiness together, which fractures both of their families in different ways. Fisher runs away to Seattle. Emmaline runs away in search of him and also finds her mother, who is also obsessed with scents.

The story arc is a familiar one. The vehicle of using scents to explore the drives and motivations of people is novel. The writing is okay, I could have done without the repetitive phrasing through out the story: "Once upon a time, Emmaline...", "My fault, my fault".... These may have been more noticeable to me listening to the audio version of the book. ( )

A story of scents and how a tell your life?s story. A beautiful story of finding oneself in the scents that surround us through our life. Kirkus: Ayoung girl with a unique talent for identifying scents embarks on a journey of self-discovery when she's ripped from her intensely isolated childhood home.Emmeline has lived with her father on an otherwise uninhabited island in the Pacific Northwest for as long as she can remember. Her father teaches her to read, to forage for food, and to hone her sense of smell. Emmeline doesn?t question their isolation, as she?s known nothing else. She adores the long days learning from her father, listening to fairy tales, and watching him use his mysterious machine. The machine produces ?scent-papers? that her father stashes inside small glass bottles, each paper preserving a one-of-a-kind scent. When tragedy strikes, Emmeline is forced to relocate to the mainland. She is taken in by a kind, childless couple in a seaside village. Similar to a wild animal suddenly brought into captivity, 12-year-old Emmeline struggles to adapt. As she slowly establishes a new life, beginning school and navigating adolescence, questions about her father, her absentee mother, and her own identity continue to grow. The more she learns about her past, the harder it becomes to reconcile her childhood with her future. Told entirely from Emmeline?s perspective, the novel contains three distinct sections. The first, where Emmeline is living in the wild, is suffused with wonder and enchantment. The author deftly describes the lush island and the awe of a little girl watching her father fill a cabin with mysterious bottles full of scents and dreams. Once Emmeline moves to the mainland, the patina of her youth wears off, and much of the magic of the story goes with it. Even so, the author?s ability to describe scents, the nature in which they evolve, and how deeply they are tied to memory and emotion provides sufficient heft to keep the novel engaging and worthwhile. Told in a lyrical, haunting prose, the story provides fascinating information about the ways in which different fragrances can impact human behavior and the struggles of finding one?s own identity.An artfully crafted coming-of-age story that will take the reader on an exquisite olfactory adventure.

I took a break an hour in and almost didn't go back! If you can make it through the weird what "kinda world is this set in" beginning you'll be glad you did. Lived up to the hype ( )

More like a 2.5 stars but i rounded up to 3. ( )

A really lovely and lyrical story about a girl who finds her self at the most vulnerable position between fairy tales and truth. The ebb and flow of the writing carries you through the story so easily - there's a definitely feeling of waves crashing against a shore - each time revealing a little more beach as the tide goes out.

It's sad and haunting at the same times as being beautiful and harrowing - the resilience of Emmaline to continue searching for the truth even after it slaps her in the face time and time again, she keeps searching for that feeling of home and realizes it isn't anywhere she expects it to be. ( )