Review #16: Where Love Lies by Julie Cohen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Jeffrey Stepakoff, an American television writer, producer, and author, has captured the definition of any particular “scent" in his remarkable words, as;

“A good fragrance is really a powerful cocktail of memories and emotion.”

Julie Cohen, the English author has crafted a beautiful tale about scents and fragrances triggering any particular memory in her new novel, Where Love Lies. I'm pretty sure that while reading the book, you too are going to get engulfed by the beauty of this tale and also get lost in the beautiful fragrance underlying in this tale.

Synopsis:
Felicity, a children's book author, is married to her husband, Quinn for just a year and within her 1 year of marriage, Felicity's mind remains always clouded by doubt and uncertainty about Quinn, love and marriage. Quinn wants Felicity to try for a baby, but her mind is clogged with her book's protagonist's next adventure and with the idea of love. But suddenly, Felicity and only Felicity can smell the fragrance of frangipani flowers wherever she went, but when she consulted her GP, he confirms it to be due to her migraine pains and that particular smell is related to a man that Felicity once loved almost 10 years ago. As Felicity falls one more for that beautiful man from her past, her marriage to Quinn seems so bleak and uncertain. Will Felicity hold onto the smell of frangipani flowers? Will Felicity come to term with a simple smell that's almost haunting her marriage?

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Review #15: Dear Thing by Julie Cohen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Cheryl Rae Tiegs, an American model, actress, designer, author, and entrepreneur, has once said,
"But when I would see the surrogate, my first instinct, my first reaction would be jealousy, because she was doing what I wanted to do."

Dear Thing by Julie Cohen, is a tale about a mother who no longer wants to be a mother and another mother who is desperately trying to be a 'mother' for the first time. Their paths cross when one becomes the surrogate of the other, owing to the fact that, they both loved the same man.

An enticing tale about love, trust, motherhood, and the very less discussed topics of these times- surrogacy! When couples, who are trying to be parents for the first time, fail in IVF methods and they don't want to go through all those hectic and long procedures of adoption, then they opt the surrogacy option, i.e. taking the help of another women's womb to reproduce your own flesh and blood and with the help of artificial insemination, the sperms and eggs of the wanna-be parents couples, are planted on that other woman's womb.

Julie Cohen, the author, has given us a thorough insight into the world of surrogate mothers, and how they try to not to get attached with the baby and in order of not getting way too attached with the baby, they sometimes start addressing the baby as 'Thing' and how strongly they balance their own emotions with that of the baby's parents.

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