Book Review for Full Bloom by Francesca Serritella

 

Full Bloom by Francesca Serritella

Published:  August 5, 2025 by Ballantine Books

Genre: Mystery, Magical Realism, New York, Romance Mystery

Taken from Goodreads:  The power to be seen. The power to be heard. The power to be adored. . .

A woman's life is forever changed by a mysterious perfume in this stunning novel about ambition and untapped desire from the New York Times bestselling author of Ghosts of Harvard.

Reeling from a breakup and overlooked at her job as a lighting designer, Iris Sunnegren finds herself stuck, disconnected, and lonely in crowded New York City. Her wealthy friends are married and having babies, while she’s trying to pay for freezing her eggs. And the future she longs for feels out of reach.

Then, a mysterious neighbor, an older Frenchwoman, makes her a a bespoke perfume.

One spritz, a dab behind the ears, and Iris is a different woman. Suddenly, she is the object of every man’s desire, and she can satisfy her own hungers for sex, love, and ambition. She can cast off her inhibitions and use her newfound allure to dazzle the high-profile client, attract a man who excites her like no other, and access all the rarified spaces that once excluded her. Under the perfume’s heady spell, Iris embodies her maximum power—a flower fully bloomed.

But there is danger in connecting to our primal emotions. Scent awakens buried memories, and nightmares of the childhood house fire she barely survived return to haunt her. As Iris ventures deeper into the glamorous and male-dominated worlds of New York real estate, dimly-lit steakhouses, and beachfront mansions in the Hamptons, she finds herself getting closer to unspeakable truths—about the people she trusted, about the people she loved, and about the new circle of power-players that invited her in.

A sensual and seductive novel set among the upper echelons of New York City, Full Bloom is at once a poignant story of becoming and a riveting mystery that Who are you without your inhibitions? Does being wanted get what you want, or will you be devoured by desire?

My Thoughts:  Can your scent make you more attractive to people?   I would say yes but this book, Full Bloom, takes the scent attraction to another level.   I found it interesting that every interaction Iris has is reflected on by her scent and how she perceives that person, usually a man, reacts to her.   I wanted Iris to stand on her own, figure out how important she is, and realize that even without her perfume she is worthwhile. 

I struggled to like Iris.   She was very down on herself and had a lot of sex with people she assumed only were attracted to her scent.  I felt like she was looking for something she was never going to find.   She was not happy with her life and wanted to find someone else to make her happy.   

I am a Francesca Serritella fan.  I have read a few of her books that she wrote with her mom and enjoyed that.  I look forward to what she writes next.

Thank you Ballantine Books for a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

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Meet the Author (taken from her website):  Francesca Serritella is the New York Times bestselling author of Ghosts of Harvard, nominated for Best First Novel by International Thriller Writers, and a nine-book series of essay collections co-written with her mother, author Lisa Scottoline, based on their Sunday column in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Serritella graduated cum laude from Harvard University, where she won multiple awards for her fiction, including the Thomas T. Hoopes Prize. She lives in New York City with her eighteen-year-old cat and her new puppy.