The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

This was exactly the book I needed it to be when I read it. My brain was fried from all the homework I’d been doing, the weather was turning cold, I was drinking tea after tea and all I wanted was to cozy up on my couch and read. This did it for me. It’s a novel about a girl who eats a cake her mother has made for her birthday and from that moment on can taste people’s feelings in their cooking. Which is weird, but not as weird as it sounds. The prose is lyrical but not overly self-indulgent, and even with this strange anomaly, you believe the narrator every step of the way.

Read this if you want reading that isn’t hard but also isn’t patronizing or pedantic, that will tell you a story without distracting you with inconsistencies but without requiring you to focus too greatly.