Review The Memory of Lemon by Judith Fertig

4 Stars

Claire (who goes by Neely) has moved back home and has opened her dream bakery.  She is no ordinary baker, her flavor combinations are nothing short of magical and she seems to have the uncanny ability to know exactly what flavor will touch her customer’s souls.  She can “taste” the flavor of her customer to know what the right combination is for their baked delight.

Neely has taken on a large high-end wedding short notice and is having nothing but problems.  She’s dealing with a free-spirited bride and her very overbearing mother.  She can’t get a read on either one of them and is having a terrible time trying to help them choose the perfect wedding cake.  To add to this, she’s going through a messy divorce, re-kindling an old romance and her absentee father has started mailing her again after nearly two decades.

The story was well written and her interactions between the bride and her mother and all of the supporting cast was believable and genuine.  Neely was a very solid character and you could easily feel a connection to her, as well as the other supporting characters in her life from Ben, her old flame to Maggie, her employee at the bakery.  They are, for the most part, well-thought and well put together characters, ones you could see yourself running into if you visited her hometown.

I wasn’t as much of a fan of the back and forth that the story took between Neely and back through her ancestry, showing where her gift of “taste” comes from.  For me, it did take away from the story a little too much to be abruptly thrown back in time to a different person and place, seemingly at random and sometimes it didn’t seem to have a real connection with what was going on in Neely’s world.

I also saw a few loose ends that never did get tied off and left me feeling a little unsatisfied.  If the author is going to be doing a follow up book to this one, I guess it would make sense.  If not, there are a few threads that could be snipped without doing any damage to the story.  But I still liked the story and the characters and I am definitely going to pick up other works by Judith Fertig to see if there are more adventures with Neely and her wonderful gift.