The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

What spoke to me the most was the concept of innate magical talent, and that power can be unlocked in an individual.

I liked how Bender’s constructed world made sense to me—a contemporary reality that could also contain the imaginative. Rose discovers her talent at an early age, tasting people’s emotions by their food; I loved the brilliance and simplicity of this idea. I also appreciated the layered story beyond the magic as I got to follow Rose’s emotional growth journey.   

This is the second book on my list in which food contains emotion, but in this novel, it is the narrator, Rose, who, on her ninth birthday, tastes the sadness and despair in the lemon cake her mother has baked for her. She learns that the same holds true for anything she eats – she can taste the emotions of whoever prepared it.  

What I loved most about the magical element here was that it allowed the author to describe other characters’ feelings without having to show them another way, such as through action or dialogue. It brought an immediacy… show more.

This is a gem of a book: perceptive, quirky, clear-eyed, and dark. Bender uses the tradition and taste of food, starting with her mother’s lemon cake recipe as a mysterious access point that unlocks the complicated secrets of the heart. It’s clever and stunningly written, deceptively deep but also sensuously thrilling. "I reached to the side of the cake pan, to the least obvious part, and pulled off a small warm spongy chunk of deep gold. Iced it all over with chocolate. Popped the whole thing into my mouth."