A review by butteredtoastinbed
Perfume by Patrick Süskind

challenging dark informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I liked this book more than I thought I was going to. I am not usually a fan of historical fiction or classics but I found myself really enjoying this.
The main character was not likeable (which usually is a big turnoff for me) but that was exactly the point of the story and it helped with moving the story along and the complexity of emotions brought up throughout. There were a lot of background characters that I sometimes got confused between when they were mentioned by name, but they rarely overlapped so this was not too much of an issue. The pacing was also excellent, I at no point found myself in a slump or bored with the story. I also really liked the ending, I was worried that the end of the story would not be satisfactory after going through the entire novel with the main character, but I think it was great and left me very satisfied and with the story nicely wrapped up by the end.
It’s only not a 5 star rating for me because the story and characters didn’t captivate me and draw me in as intensely as I would want for a 5 star book. Overall, it is a great book that I enjoyed and would definitely recommend. I am however unlikely to reread it in the near future, not because I didn’t like it but because the story was perfect left where it was and I also don’t think a reread would reveal more story that I may have missed the first time through. 
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