Sucreabeille: Bitter Orange

"Bitter Orange" is from a monthly subscription bag and I can't find it on the site. It came with Wake the Dead. Both share bitter/burnt/caramel notes.

The description of Bitter Orange is "So much orange, burnt sugar, salted caramel, and chocolate."

I was looking forward to this but I don't really detect caramel or chocolate and the orange is very bitter and astringent, not orange-juice-y. I really like a few of their chocolate scents, especially Here's the thing: fuck everyone.

To be fair, I have a difficult relationship with orange juice and oranges since starting lithium (which I stopped taking because although it's a miracle solution for many people I had all the weird bad side effects that weren't potentially deadly, including it affecting my taste). Oranges/orange juice have tasted utterly foul since then, a taste I can't even describe except "bad" or "danger." It doesn't taste rotten or spoiled; it doesn't taste like garbage; it doesn't taste acrid or chemical-y. It just tastes like "do not drink."

For quite a long time that's how water tasted but it rarely does now, thank goodness. I was so, so thirsty.

So I don't really detect orange in this, which is a shame as I love the smell of oranges, and I don't pick up on chocolate even though I do in other perfumes they make.

I don't like this one. I don't think it's a "doesn't play well with my skin" thing either because even in the bottle it smells simplistic - like burnt sugar, but not sugar that's burnt in a nice way.when I make caramel sauce I make it darker than most people do, just this edge of burnt, a hint of bitter that livens it up. I was really anticipating liking this scent.

Alas.

It does have an interesting smoke-but-not-smoke essence to it a few hours after I put it on but it's not interesting enough to keep wearing and, again, the bitterness overshadows it.

I can really see this appealing to a certain type of person who's into bitter burnt sugar stuff but it's not for me.