The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender

The premise of Lemon Cake is a unique one, of a girl, Rose, who can taste the emotions of the one(s) who made it in her food. It starts with her mother's lemon cake (hence the title) on her 8th birthday when she tastes her mother's sadness and desperation. As she gets used to her new ability she is eventually able to detect where food is from down to the factory or county.

When I read the inside flap, I thought it would be a sweet piece of chic lit ending with happiness and true love. It was nothing like that. The book had a raw feeling throughout, perhaps because of the lack of quotation marks. It felt like it was all a memory, like I was intruding on Rose's most private thoughts. When I finished I had to pause for a moment and think it over, just to process what I had just read. The author manages to be both incredibly technical and in depth while at the same time telling the reader almost nothing. At times, even though the story is told from Rose's first-person point of view, I felt as if the family was inside a glass box, each person in their own little compartment.

4 stars. Good, but not my usual cup of coffee. Yes, I just changed that expression.

Symbolic, aint it?