Book Recs for Frag Heads
Below are a series of book recommendations based on my fragrance collection!
En Plein Air, by Jouissance
Romantic Hero by Kirsty Greenwood is about a romance novelist who accidentally brings a character from one of her books to life... and oh no, he's hot! (They have a picnic in a London park, btw)
Winter in Sokcho, by Elisa Shua Dusapin is a totally different vibe. Melancholic yearning in a wintry, Korean seaside town. There's a French writer in this book, and I think he'd enjoy this.
Baise Moi on the Dancefloor, by Discothéque
Guitar Girl, by Sarra Manning is about starting a punk band with your mates, getting accidentally famous, going on tour and risking it all for a manipulative rockstar (we've all been there).
The Intimacy Experiment, by Rosie Danan, is about an adult entertainment star who falls for... a Rabbi. It's sexy, sweet, and I could totally see the main character wearing this fragrance.
Fleur Musc for Her, by Narciso Rodriguez
Violet, by SJI Holliday is a book about toxic female friendship during the backpacking trip of a lifetime.
Until it Fades, by K. A. Tucker is a deeply emotional romance between a single mother despised by her whole town and a national sports star whose life she saves.
Kar-Wai, by Carine Roitfeld
How We Disappeared, by Jing-Jing Lee is a deeply moving story which follows two timelines. It's about generations of hurt and shame, stemming from the way women in Singapore were treated during World War Two. I found it difficult to place this book because it's deeply sad, but it's so wonderfully written I think it deserves a spot.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E Harrow is one of my favourite books. She might be my favourite writer. This one's about January, a girl with a special kind of magic that allows her to create doors to other worlds. I cried, it's so beautiful. All her books are.
Moonlight Ceremony, by Mystikum
Water Shall Refuse Them is a folk horror novel set in a Welsh valley in the sweltering summer of 1976. It's witchy and smoky and frankly, entirely sepia-toned.
Bog People, edited by Hollie Starling, is a collection of folk horror stories by working class writers in the UK. If that's not enough to make you read it, I don't know what is.
Dark Imagination, by Discothéque
Eclipse of the Century, by Jan Mark is a seriously underrated novel in which a kid in a car crash dreams of a lonely town in the Asian desert, and when he wakes up he realises it's real... and goes there.
The Lottery (and other stories), by Shirley Jackson should really need no introduction. Jackson's short stories are so flawlessly unsettling, they're perfect for reading curled up on a warm evening.
Smoky Soul, by Olfactive Studio
Blood Tide (and the follow up, Blood Song), by Melvin Burgess, is a deeply strange and ridiculously cool book for teens, based on the Volsunga Saga. It's set in a futuristic, apocalyptic London... and there are genetically modified, talking pigs. It's brutal, bloody and smoke-singed, and if you want to get your bloodthirsty teen boys reading this would not be a bad choice.
Beowulf is... Beowulf. I don't know what else you want from me - you should read it, pick any version (I'm suggesting the Seamus Heaney translation, but your mileage may vary). I reckon the Anglo Saxon era probably smelt smoky like this.
Hojicha (Roasted Green Tea) by J-Scent
The Matcha Maker Café, by Lily Chen is seriously cute. It's a romance in a Matcha café, naturally!
Last Chance, by Sarah Dessen is one of the core memories of my teenage reading. It captured the feeling of being an awkward, unwanted teenage girl and then finding a place for yourself unexpectedly. It's charming, sweet, and the whole cast of characters have stuck with me for about twenty years.
Bloody Wood, by Les Liquides Imaginaires
The Vampyre, by John Polidori was written the same weekend as Frankenstein, and it's eponymous villain is quite clearly based on Lord Byron, which I find highly amusing.
Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris is the start of the series that had my heart when I was 19. If Eric Northman handed me, frankly, anything to drink... I'd take it, and be grateful.
Orchidivy, by Pierre Guillaume Paris
Forget This Ever Happened, by Cassandra Rose Clark is a fever dream in which a town no one remembers is home to a series of peculiar monsters that make people forget they exist the further away from them they get.
Strange Beasts of China, by Yan Ge (translated by Jeremy Tiang) is a series of case notes from a woman whose job it is to catalogue the strange beasts - but the story rapidly becomes something more personal than work the more she discovers about them.
Osang, by Mendittorosa
The Bone Pedlar, by Sylvian Hamilton is about Sir Richard Straccan, former Crusades knight who now makes a living by sourcing and selling reliquaries (body parts of saints) to religious centres around the country. Which is all well and good, until he pisses off a witch and catches the eye of Bad King John.
The Starving Saints, by Caitlin Starling is a beautifully strange story about a castle under siege, fully of desperate people who want to believe when a set of wax-faced "saints" arrive to "save" them. But if they're not really saints, then what are they?
Arashi No Umi, by Maison Matine
Into the Miso Soup, by Ryu Murakami is a classic Japanese satire horror about a tour guide who has to show an American tourist around Shinjuku. There are many women on the edges of this story, and I think they'd like this.
Totally Deceased, by Sue H Cunningham is about a girl who receives a heart transplant, which is great news except her heart's former owner is insistent that she should help solve the dead girl's murder - and that involves learning what life's like at a posh girl's boarding school.