Here’s my review of Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Doubleday)

This review originally appeared in the June 2010 issue of Los Angeles magazine

Nine-year-old Rose Edelstein has a special ability: She can taste people’s emotions through their cooking. Rose narrates USC associate professor Aimee Bender’s delicious second novel. She perceives a crushing sadness in her mother’s food but can’t find the source of her father’s cold disposition. As Rose copes with her newfound gift, she finds that her brother also has an unusual skill–one that pushes the struggling family to the brink. It leads us to wonder, What would our own cooking taste like? //WENDY WITHERSPOON