New Review: Jennifer Blake’s PERFUME OF PARADISE – Exciting Adventure with a Privateer Hero to Love!

Well-written and well-researched, this is a story set in 1803 beginning on the island of Sanit-Dominque in the Caribbean (today modern Haiti) in the time of violent slave uprisings. Elene Larpent returns from school in France to find her papa has betrothed her to Durant Gambier, a man she thinks is harsh. Worried about whether he’ll be kind and gentle, her maid comes to her with a solution…a perfume that will enthrall any man and keep him her slave.

Before Elene can be wed, the island’s slaves attack and she and her maid flee into the sugar cane field where she is rescued by the privateer Ryan Bayard.

To escape the violence, a mulatto friend of Ryan’s hides them in a pit under his dining room…only 4’ x 7’…for 3 days—and of course, Elene’s perfume drives Ryan wild. You can guess the result. Since she has lost everything, when they escape the island, Ryan persuades her to come with him to New Orleans where much is happening in the change of countries ruling Louisiana. He asks Elene to marry him, but she thinks it’s only due to the perfume and refuses—but is it?

New Cover

Blake sets her story in a time of great upheaval in the island and in Louisiana and did the hard research to make the background and historic details authentic as indicated in her “Author’s Note” at the end.

The descriptions are rich, the dialog clever and there are some wonderful characters. There is also a mystery as people keep dying of arsenic poisoning and Elene is determined to find the culprit.

I recommend it.