What I Read -- The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

I read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake while I was on vacation last month.  It seemed like a good beach read, and since I was going to be in a beachy place, it was just what I needed.

There were some parts of this book I really liked.  Some, not so much. The basic plot is a twist on Like Water for Chocolate.  Our protagonist, Rose, is celebrating her ninth birthday when the book opens.  She takes a bite of the lemon cake her mother made and realizes, to her horror, that she can taste her mother's emotions in the cake.  Rose explores and tastes other things.  She can taste everyone's emotions in whatever food they make. 

What I liked: I enjoyed Rose as a narrator.  She is a child who knows too much.  The author succeeds in providing older-than-her-age perception and explanation while maintaining a child's voice.  I liked all the talk of food, and the just-edging-on-magical-realism idea that your emotions end up in your food.

What I didn't particularly like: Rose's brother plays a big, and really quite odd, role in the book.  This is serious magical realism, and has put me off any desire I might have had to get my first sample of Gabriel Garcia Marquez since high school.

It was a mixed bag.