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Do you want to hear a story? A nice one or an interesting one? Alexandra Sashents Hunanyan is a young Armenian author, who through her contemporary work of fiction “The Smell of Your Tears”,  reflects on the issues and battles that GenZ faces nowadays in our society.

This book is about a group of freshmen navigating through their first year of college. The story’s perspective changes through the chapters; in the book, the story is told by an omniscient narrator, but through the chapters, the reader gets to delve into each character’s mind, thus allowing one to sympathize with them even more. This perspective change is important because, through each character, the readers will see different mental and physical struggles.

The story includes a lot of mental struggles, such as eating disorders, depression, PTSD, anxiety, etc. Each of these is introduced through a character and how they deal with them, whether in a healthy way or an unhealthy way. It also introduces different types of family dynamics and the issues each faces: miscommunication, unwillingness to hear one another, dishonesty, and many others, to which I believe readers can strongly relate.

There are also no black-and-white characters. You will not find your typical villain or hero. Of course, you will see characters, you will like best and characters that you will hate, but when you read this book, you feel like you are getting to know actual real-life people because all of them have their faults and make mistakes, and no one is perfect just like in real life.

Another unique detail of this piece is that the reader decides for themselves who the main character is, who they may sympathize with more, or who they can relate to more. This book also has different types of conflicts, both external and internal. The internal struggle of accepting yourself, of escaping from your past. It shows how different people deal with big changes, like starting university, trying to be independent, and making new friends. It concludes with a very natural and not overdone character arc and conflict resolution.

What’s very original about this story is that while reading, you can find so many different genres in one work of fiction. You will indulge in romance, friendships, heartbreak, family drama, humor, adventures, and plot twists, all in 293 pages of one book called “The Smell of Your Tears”, which is available on Amazon. 

 Lilia Sahakyan

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