This is What it Smells Like

"My mother gave birth to me because she wanted someone to fix her a sandwich." From the first sentence you know that Valentine's life is different.

At age twenty-four Valentine has never met her father, Ray.Now he asks to return to her North Carolina home so that he can meet her and die in peace. When he shows up with the step-son no one knew existed and his pet gecko, Val wants nothing to do with either of them, but Tess, her drug-addicted mother, is ready to bring everyone together in one big dysfunctional family.

Born with the surreal ability to smell deception, love, fear, even days of the week, Valentine sniffs out a decades old secret between her mother, the brooding priest who has been spying on her from his office window at the College across the street, and the dying father she knows only from old photographs.

Forgiveness and reconciliation seem impossible until something is revealed to Valentine on the night of her father’s death.