My Rating: 4/5
Review: Upon closing this book, I felt a little unfulfilled. There wasn't much closure, and I was left with that old feeling of "but what happened next?" It was a great story, however. Very unique to anything I've read before. I was drawn in immediately by Rose Edelstein, and her peculiar gift of being able to taste the feelings of anyone's food she eats. It begins on her ninth birthday, when her mother bakes her a lemon cake. Mrs. Edelstein was always cheerful and positive on the outside, but Rose soon finds out that she isn't really a happy person at all. It's a horrible realization for a young girl, and this new "gift" is something she wishes very much that she could give back. Rose tells her story from there all the way up to age twenty-two. It is funny, sad, interesting, and at times even a little uplifting. I just wish there could be a sequel.
Book Description: On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.
The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.
