I really enjoyed The Lantern. It was a combination of a mystery, drama and love story. The premise of the story revolves around a family that inhabited a cottage and surrounding acreage years ago. One of the daughters is stricken with blindness in her early youth and actually grows up to be an admired and successful perfume maker. She uses her sister and other friends to help describe colors to her. A favorite quote in the story was: "I finally went blind when I was thirteen years old and it was the loss of my sight that took me to places I might never have seen." Because people were forever describing the lavender fields or the color of blue to her, the book and the author's writing style began to take on a very poetic feel for me. It was like an artist painting a picture and the descriptions were like looking at a blank canvas and watching a scenic view slowly appear. Another favorite quote is: "Some scents sparkle and then quickly disappear. Some scents release a rush of half-forgotten memories. And then there are the scents that seem to express truths about people and places that you have never forgotten -- the scents that make time stand still." They say that when a person loses one sense, that another of their senses will magnify itself. The blind sister's sense of smell was so keen and she so aptly could mingle various scents to create a particular atmosphere of feelings. It brought back memories to me of how the smell of yeast draws me back to the days of my grandmother baking rolls; how the smell of an iris takes me back 50 years to the days of a grandmother's iris bed that spanned an acre. I love how the smell of cinnamon reminds me of my mother baking pies and the smell of sawdust takes me back to days spent with my father in his workshop. I guess when we lose a loved one, we keep them with us in the scents that hold memories. Don't get me wrong - this book is NOT a melancholy, "good old days" story. It is ripe with mystery, murder and questions but somewhere in the midst of the story it spoke to me and, at least for now - if you can pardon the pun, has awakened a desire to stop and smell the roses.