Book Review: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

A brief overview:
On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.

The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.
Is one of the strangest books I have ever read. It took me awhile to get into the book. For some reason or another, I kept confusing the main character's brother - Joseph with his best friend, George. Something else that caught me off-guard and made the book frustrating to read was the lack of any type of quotations or punctuation when people in the book were talking.

I had heard from a friend, that it was a good book, and added it to my mental list of "books to check-out at the library." Upon my visit to the library, my mental list vanished and I just went looking around at various books to pique my interest. I suddenly looked down and lo and behold, there was the book that my friend had told me about! I love it when things work out like that! So I scooped up that one as well as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and My Name is Memory.

What a great day to finish reading a book though! We went to bed around 1am this morning - just because we were both awake and busy doing things around the house. I was busy scanning in all of the pages of my "inspiration" 3-ring binders. I have four HUGE binders that hold magazine clippings, ads, articles, anything that drew inspiration at some point, cataloged and filed under common name groupings. I finished one entire binder last night. I had started the project a little after 3pm and finished up around the 1am marker. Anywho, the weather here turned stormy around 3 or 4am. At about 5:30 or 6, we were both wide awake and could not fall back asleep. I showered, made myself breakfast and snuggled up on the futon downstairs to finish the book.

I am looking forward to jumping into the next book. There has been a lot of talk more recently about the "series" of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books, so I am excited to see what all the fuss is really about!

Later today we will be driving over to WI for my cousin and sister's grad party (from college - even though my sister does not officially graduate until next December). But I suppose we will also be celebrating her engagement to Tyler there as well... I made some "specialty cupcakes" for the party - stay tuned for photos of those!

-LD