... and while I think the cover art on this one is quite good, there is little doubt that the title, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (by Aimee Bender), is what drew me in... joining the pantheon of books that my other half would say "sound like something you would read," haha!
While I try not to know too much about a book beforehand, I was also intrigued by the premise... a young girl who is a "food psychic" of sorts and can "feel" the emotions of the person who prepared the food she eats and even detect the way (and where) the food was raised (i.e. organic is better). So I knew from the start that this would be one of those books where keeping an open mind was key (not that I generally have a problem with that, given my penchant for books about vampires). Later, while reading reviews of the book on GoodReads, the phrase "magical realism" kept coming up. I don't know if that's an official literary genre, but it does help to classify it... a quite "real" family melodrama with the addition of some very "unreal" elements.
For the most part, I enjoyed the book. It was interesting watching young Rose struggle with/try to harness this special skill/gift which all started when she learned (spoiler alert) of her mother's particular sadness while eating a piece of her lemon cake. But along the way, secrets are exposed and other family mysteries unfold.
If you had not noticed, above I did say "for the most part" which means there's a big 'ole BUT... that being, the book totally crumbled for me in the end. It is difficult to explain while without given away some serious plot points, but I will try to keep this spoiler-free and say it had to do with the resolution to Rose's brother Joseph's storyline which I found to be not only far too jolting but very inconsistent with some of those "family mysteries" that I coyly mentioned above.
I knew this book and author were fairly well-received, so upon finishing it I quickly headed over to GoodReads to see if I was alone with my WTF? reaction. There are two types of "don't get it" books... the "good" kind where you suspect there really is something more going on that your mind can't quite process it... and the other kind, where your gut just really tells you that you are not missing anything. Fortunately, through quite a few good (and even some glowing) reviews for this book, there were and undercurrent of reviews that certainly supported my opinion, which was a relief.
I gave the book 2.5 of 5 stars ... bumped it up to 3 stars on GoodReads whole-number system, since I thought it was a quite good book pretty much 90% of the way. So while I can't personally recommend this one, I'd still love to have someone else read it that I know to get their reaction!
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