-
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Aimee Bender
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $15.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Butterfly Lampshade
- A Novel
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight-year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she's sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.
-
-
Quite a Journey!
- By Anonymous User on 09-10-20
By: Aimee Bender
-
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
- Stories
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie, Alex McKenna, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no lips?
-
-
Lovely, Weird. Need More!
- By Erica Shanks on 03-05-24
By: Aimee Bender
-
Lessons in Chemistry
- A Novel
- By: Bonnie Garmus
- Narrated by: Miranda Raison, Bonnie Garmus, Pandora Sykes
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.
-
-
Making my 3 adult daughters read this
- By Teresa H. on 04-07-22
By: Bonnie Garmus
-
Remarkably Bright Creatures
- A Novel
- By: Shelby Van Pelt
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Michael Urie
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.
-
-
Hidden gem, incredible narration!
- By Christine T on 05-17-22
By: Shelby Van Pelt
-
Day
- A Novel
- By: Michael Cunningham
- Narrated by: Julianne Moore
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
April 5, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, husband and wife, are slowly drifting apart—and both, it seems, are a little bit in love with Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, is living vicariously through a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house—and whose departure threatens to break the family apart.
-
-
The writing is lovely.
- By D. W. Trimm on 12-01-23
-
Normal Rules Don't Apply
- Stories
- By: Kate Atkinson
- Narrated by: Paterson Joseph
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A dazzling collection of eleven interconnected stories from the bestselling, award-winning author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life, with everything that listeners love about her novels—the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations on human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop.
-
-
Playful jigsaw puzzle of stories
- By ReallyNelie on 02-24-24
By: Kate Atkinson
-
The Butterfly Lampshade
- A Novel
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight-year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she's sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.
-
-
Quite a Journey!
- By Anonymous User on 09-10-20
By: Aimee Bender
-
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
- Stories
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie, Alex McKenna, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no lips?
-
-
Lovely, Weird. Need More!
- By Erica Shanks on 03-05-24
By: Aimee Bender
-
Lessons in Chemistry
- A Novel
- By: Bonnie Garmus
- Narrated by: Miranda Raison, Bonnie Garmus, Pandora Sykes
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.
-
-
Making my 3 adult daughters read this
- By Teresa H. on 04-07-22
By: Bonnie Garmus
-
Remarkably Bright Creatures
- A Novel
- By: Shelby Van Pelt
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Michael Urie
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.
-
-
Hidden gem, incredible narration!
- By Christine T on 05-17-22
By: Shelby Van Pelt
-
Day
- A Novel
- By: Michael Cunningham
- Narrated by: Julianne Moore
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
April 5, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, husband and wife, are slowly drifting apart—and both, it seems, are a little bit in love with Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, is living vicariously through a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house—and whose departure threatens to break the family apart.
-
-
The writing is lovely.
- By D. W. Trimm on 12-01-23
-
Normal Rules Don't Apply
- Stories
- By: Kate Atkinson
- Narrated by: Paterson Joseph
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A dazzling collection of eleven interconnected stories from the bestselling, award-winning author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life, with everything that listeners love about her novels—the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations on human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop.
-
-
Playful jigsaw puzzle of stories
- By ReallyNelie on 02-24-24
By: Kate Atkinson
-
The Secret Life of Sunflowers
- By: Marta Molnar, Dana Marton
- Narrated by: Kendra Murray
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Hollywood auctioneer Emsley Wilson finds her famous grandmother's diary while cleaning out her New York brownstone, the pages are full of surprises. The first surprise is, the diary isn't her grandmother's. It belongs to Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh's sister-in-law.
-
-
Nothing like a expected…
- By LOVETOQUILT on 05-06-23
By: Marta Molnar, and others
-
The Measure
- A Novel
- By: Nikki Erlick
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It seems like any other day. You wake up, pour a cup of coffee, and head out. But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. This box holds your fate inside: the answer to the exact number of years you will live. From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?
-
-
heavy content
- By Cherece on 09-12-22
By: Nikki Erlick
-
Before the Coffee Gets Cold: A Toshikazu Kawaguchi Book Set
- By: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
- Narrated by: Arina Ii, Kevin Shen
- Length: 18 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What would you do if you could travel back in time? Discover the internationally bestselling novels of Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, now a worldwide phenomenon and BookTok sensation, in this special new book set. Step inside Tokyo’s whimsical Café Funiculi Funicula and travel back in time with a cast of unforgettable characters.
-
-
very profound, lost in translation?
- By Ashlyn C. on 10-06-23
-
Yellowface
- A Novel
- By: R. F. Kuang
- Narrated by: Helen Laser
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena’s a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn’t even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I.
-
-
I've never hated a character harder
- By ashelyn downs on 07-26-23
By: R. F. Kuang
-
The School of Essential Ingredients
- By: Erica Bauermeister
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once a month on a Monday night, eight students gather in Lillian's restaurant for a cooking class. Among them is Claire, a young woman coming to terms with her new identity as a mother; Tom, a lawyer whose life has been overturned by loss; Antonia, an Italian kitchen designer adapting to life in America; and Carl and Helen, a long-married couple whose union contains surprises the rest of the class would never suspect.
-
-
Lovely, lovely book
- By Molly-o on 03-21-09
-
Weyward
- A Novel
- By: Emilia Hart
- Narrated by: Aysha Kala, Helen Keeley, Nell Barlow
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart's Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.
-
-
Awful, Problematic Story
- By Anonymous User on 04-23-23
By: Emilia Hart
-
Shantaram
- A Novel
- By: Gregory David Roberts
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 42 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An escaped convict with a false passport, Lin flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of Bombay, where he can disappear. Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter the city’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere.
-
-
Probably the best performance I've listened to.
- By Mickey on 04-15-14
-
The Goldfinch
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 32 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity. It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.
-
-
Boy, am I in the minority on this one.
- By Bonny on 11-04-13
By: Donna Tartt
-
The Lovely Bones
- By: Alice Sebold
- Narrated by: Alice Sebold
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When we first meet 14-year-old Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. In the sweet, untroubled voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and her own adjustment to the strange new place where she finds herself. With love, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie watches her family as they cope with their grief. This story of seemingly unbearable tragedy is transformed into a suspenseful and touching narrative about family, memory, love, heaven, and living.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Kim on 12-10-09
By: Alice Sebold
-
Wicked
- The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
- By: Gregory Maguire
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 19 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Heralded as an instant classic of fantasy literature, Maguire has written a wonderfully imaginative retelling of The Wizard of Oz told from the Wicked Witch's point of view. More than just a fairy tale for adults, Wicked is a meditation on the nature of good and evil.
-
-
It's not easy being green
- By PangaeaReads on 07-30-08
By: Gregory Maguire
-
Middlesex
- By: Jeffrey Eugenides
- Narrated by: Kristoffer Tabori
- Length: 21 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them - along with Callie's failure to develop physically - leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
-
-
Anything but middle.
- By Michael on 05-04-03
-
Ship of Magic
- The Liveship Traders, Book 1
- By: Robin Hobb
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 35 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bingtown is a hub of exotic trade and home to a merchant nobility famed for its liveships---rare vessels carved from wizardwood, which ripens magically into sentient awareness. The fortunes of one of Bingtown's oldest families rest on the newly awakened liveship Vivacia. For Althea Vestrit, the ship is her rightful legacy unjustly denied her---a legacy she will risk anything to reclaim.
-
-
Horrible Narrator
- By CP on 10-07-10
By: Robin Hobb
Publisher's summary
The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.
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.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad, and confirms Aimee Bender’s place as “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language” (San Francisco Chronicle).
Critic reviews
"Odd and oddly beautiful....moving"--The Washington Post
"Haunting....Bender's prose delivers electric shocks....rendering the world in fresh, unexpected jolts. Moving, fanciful and gorgeously strange."--People Magazine
"Charming and wistful....[Bender] harness[es] her exquisite, bizarre sensitivity, in this haunting examination."-- The Atlantic
More from the same
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Butterfly Lampshade
- A Novel
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight-year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she's sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.
-
-
Quite a Journey!
- By Anonymous User on 09-10-20
By: Aimee Bender
-
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
- Stories
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie, Alex McKenna, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no lips?
-
-
Lovely, Weird. Need More!
- By Erica Shanks on 03-05-24
By: Aimee Bender
-
Willful Creatures
- Stories
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne, Jorjeana Marie, Alex McKenna
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aimee Bender’s Willful Creatures conjures a fantastical world in which authentic love blooms. This is a place where a boy with keys for fingers is a hero, a woman’s children are potatoes, and a little boy with an iron for a head is born to a family of pumpkin heads. With her singular mix of surrealism, musical prose, and keenly felt emotion, Bender once again proves herself to be a masterful chronicler of the human condition.
By: Aimee Bender
-
An Invisible Sign of My Own
- A Novel
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mona Gray was 10 when her father contracted a mysterious illness and she became a quitter, abandoning each of her talents just as pleasure became intense. The only thing she can’t stop doing is math: She knocks on wood, adds her steps, and multiplies people in the park against one another. When Mona begins teaching math to second-graders, she finds a ready audience. But the difficult and wonderful facts of life keep intruding. She finds herself drawn to the new science teacher, who has an unnerving way of seeing through her intricately built façade.
By: Aimee Bender
-
The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic
- A Novel
- By: Breanne Randall
- Narrated by: Laura Horowitz
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sadie Revelare has always believed that the curse of four heartbreaks that accompanies her magic would be worth the price. But when her grandmother is diagnosed with cancer with only weeks to live, and her first heartbreak, Jake McNealy, returns to town after a decade, her carefully structured life begins to unravel.
-
-
What a Waste: Save Yourself!!!
- By Corrie on 10-29-23
By: Breanne Randall
-
The Keeper of Lost Things
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Hogan
- Narrated by: Jane Collingwood, Sandra Duncan
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anthony Peardew is the keeper of lost things. Forty years ago he carelessly lost a keepsake from his beloved fiancée, Therese. That very same day, she died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Anthony sought consolation in rescuing lost objects - the things others have dropped, misplaced, or accidently left behind - and writing stories about them. Now, in the twilight of his life, Anthony worries that he has not fully discharged his duty to reconcile all the lost things with their owners.
-
-
Charming story with great narration
- By June J on 09-29-17
By: Ruth Hogan
-
The Butterfly Lampshade
- A Novel
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight-year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she's sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.
-
-
Quite a Journey!
- By Anonymous User on 09-10-20
By: Aimee Bender
-
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
- Stories
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie, Alex McKenna, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no lips?
-
-
Lovely, Weird. Need More!
- By Erica Shanks on 03-05-24
By: Aimee Bender
-
Willful Creatures
- Stories
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne, Jorjeana Marie, Alex McKenna
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aimee Bender’s Willful Creatures conjures a fantastical world in which authentic love blooms. This is a place where a boy with keys for fingers is a hero, a woman’s children are potatoes, and a little boy with an iron for a head is born to a family of pumpkin heads. With her singular mix of surrealism, musical prose, and keenly felt emotion, Bender once again proves herself to be a masterful chronicler of the human condition.
By: Aimee Bender
-
An Invisible Sign of My Own
- A Novel
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mona Gray was 10 when her father contracted a mysterious illness and she became a quitter, abandoning each of her talents just as pleasure became intense. The only thing she can’t stop doing is math: She knocks on wood, adds her steps, and multiplies people in the park against one another. When Mona begins teaching math to second-graders, she finds a ready audience. But the difficult and wonderful facts of life keep intruding. She finds herself drawn to the new science teacher, who has an unnerving way of seeing through her intricately built façade.
By: Aimee Bender
-
The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic
- A Novel
- By: Breanne Randall
- Narrated by: Laura Horowitz
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sadie Revelare has always believed that the curse of four heartbreaks that accompanies her magic would be worth the price. But when her grandmother is diagnosed with cancer with only weeks to live, and her first heartbreak, Jake McNealy, returns to town after a decade, her carefully structured life begins to unravel.
-
-
What a Waste: Save Yourself!!!
- By Corrie on 10-29-23
By: Breanne Randall
-
The Keeper of Lost Things
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Hogan
- Narrated by: Jane Collingwood, Sandra Duncan
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anthony Peardew is the keeper of lost things. Forty years ago he carelessly lost a keepsake from his beloved fiancée, Therese. That very same day, she died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Anthony sought consolation in rescuing lost objects - the things others have dropped, misplaced, or accidently left behind - and writing stories about them. Now, in the twilight of his life, Anthony worries that he has not fully discharged his duty to reconcile all the lost things with their owners.
-
-
Charming story with great narration
- By June J on 09-29-17
By: Ruth Hogan
-
The Color Master
- Stories
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Various
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this collection, Bender’s unique talents sparkle brilliantly in stories about people searching for connection through love, sex, and family - while navigating the often painful realities of their lives. A traumatic event unfolds when a girl with flowing hair of golden wheat appears in an apple orchard, where a group of people await her. A woman plays out a prostitution fantasy with her husband and finds she cannot go back to her old sex life. An ugly woman marries an ogre and struggles to decide if she should stay with him after he mistakenly eats their children....
-
-
Not Miss Bender's Best
- By GK on 01-08-14
By: Aimee Bender
-
Garden Spells
- By: Sarah Addison Allen
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers.
Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Their history was in the soil. But so were their futures.
Together again in the house they grew up in, the Waverley sisters realize they must deal with their common legacy - if they are ever to feel at home in Bascom - or with each other.
-
-
I so want to give it 5 stars...!!!!
- By Joihelene on 10-09-10
-
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
- By: Sangu Mandanna
- Narrated by: Samara MacLaren
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don’t mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she’s used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos "pretending" to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.
-
-
The perfect cozy fall read!
- By Chloë Ester K. Cook on 10-04-22
By: Sangu Mandanna
-
The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman
- By: Julietta Henderson
- Narrated by: Katherine Parkinson
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twelve-year-old Norman Foreman and his best friend, Jax, are a legendary comedic duo in waiting, with a plan to take their act all the way to the Edinburgh Fringe. But when Jax dies, Norman decides the only fitting tribute is to perform at the festival himself. The problem is, Norman’s not the funny one. Jax was.
-
-
Loved it !
- By babybird on 05-31-21
-
Sorrow and Bliss
- A Novel
- By: Meg Mason
- Narrated by: Emilia Fox
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Martha Friel just turned forty. Once, she worked at Vogue and planned to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content. She used to live in a pied-à-terre in Paris. Now she lives in a gated community in Oxford, the only person she knows without a PhD, a baby or both, in a house she hates but cannot bear to leave. But she must leave, now that her husband Patrick—the kind who cooks, throws her birthday parties, who loves her and has only ever wanted her to be happy—has just moved out.
-
-
Very Disappointed -- 2.75 Stars
- By Sharlotte on 06-07-21
By: Meg Mason
-
The Night Circus
- A Novel
- By: Erin Morgenstern
- Narrated by: Jim Dale
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway - a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors.
-
-
Dreamlike Experience to Savor
- By Suzn F on 09-18-11
By: Erin Morgenstern
What listeners say about The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Nomad 2009
- 03-22-18
Still unsure
I’m still unsure as to whether I enjoyed this book. It wasn’t what I was expecting for sure. I just don’t know if anybody really developed or if they just got older.
I definitely prefer narrations by somebody other than the author.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Trish_N
- 06-01-12
Not the best read, nor the best written book
Would you try another book from Aimee Bender and/or Aimee Bender?
First an Foremost, the Author Aimee Bender, should have used a professional voice talent to read the book. Her reading of the book came across as flat and monotone.
Next....Listening to, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, created conflicting emotions for me. I had a hard time with it; hearing about dysfunctional people or families without knowing that there will be a positive outcome is very, very difficult for me. On the other hand, it was much like watching a train wreck, I couldn’t look away.
While not wanting to give away the plot, I will say that it was hard for me to suspend disbelief; I often read fantasy and stories which use magic at their core. To me there were two parts to the story, one of a dysfunctional family delving into the relationships of married parents; the relationship between brother and sister with little in common, and the relationship of the children and their parents. All of the relationships in the story are dysfunctional. The other part of the story is the magical ability of the main character, Rose, who begins the story at the age of 9 and follows through her adolescence and to the age of 22.
While I am glad that I didn’t give up and that I did finish the story it was difficult I would have a very hard time recommending it to others to read or to listen to it. The pace of the story is slow and the characters were often unlikeable. The mother is self-absorbed and wouldn’t win any awards for mother of the year. The father is remote and guarded and not really present in the family. The brother is socially awkward and not written with any depth; he runs through the story more shadowy than any other character. Perhaps, this is deliberate, but I never ‘cared’ about the brother, so his storyline didn’t evoke a response as the plot twists occurred. As a matter of fact, lack of depth of all of the characters is one of the major reasons I wouldn’t recommend this book. All of the characters just seemed flat. By the end of the book the oddities and strangeness of the family makes more sense but it is too little too late.
What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
The most interesting aspect of the story was the concept of intuition regarding inanimate objects.
The least interesting, the character.
Would you be willing to try another one of Aimee Bender’s performances?
Definitely, I am not interested in hearing Aimee Bender reading another offering.
Was The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake worth the listening time?
I didn't feel that it was worth my time, I finished it because, well I always finish books either read or listening.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Terry
- 06-15-12
Might have been a great experience
My wife loved this book, so I tried it. Fool that I am, I failed to notice that it was "read by the author." Bender might be a good author, but her reading made the book sound like classified ads.
Authors reading their own books. Isn't there a proposition against that in California?
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
- BeWho
- 08-30-10
Couldn't finish it
It dragged. And dragged. And dragged. I think the story line was unique, but there was nothing there to capture me, nothing that made me want to keep listening. Add with that the reader's bland, intonation-less, and grating voice, and I simply couldn't finish.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Candace Glover
- 11-29-18
Sad reader left ya a bit depressed
The storyline was weird and interesting that well written. Left you hanging a lot. But the reader had such a depressed and monotone voice I always was very sad reading his book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sarah Bergstrom
- 04-25-12
Disappointing audiobook performance
What did you like best about this story?
The premise is intriguing and original.
What didn???t you like about Aimee Bender???s performance?
This audiobook should serve as a cautionary tale for authors who want to narrate their own books. There is more to an audiobook performance than simply reading the written words aloud. The flat narration makes the book seem dull and one-dimensional. It's difficult to hear a distinction between characters, and makes an otherwise interesting premise much less engaging.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Bonny
- 10-27-11
Interesting idea, poorly executed
I'm not sure it's fair to be irritated with an author because they didn't write the book that I wanted to read, but that may be warranted with The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. Rose Edelstein's ability to taste the emotions of the person who prepared her food was initially very interesting to me; I thought of it as a type of synesthesia and was looking forward to seeing how Aimee Bender explored the subject. That plot line gets dropped about halfway through the book; then the real strangeness starts, and the book becomes Rose's brother's story.
The only reason I remotely enjoyed this book was because of this one line, a statement by Rose's mother, "Sometimes, she said mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children"..."That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit." I've been thinking about this a lot recently as my children have grown up and left home. We feel as if we know them so well as children because we willingly tend to all their physical and emotional needs over 18 years or so, and know so many aspects of their lives and thoughts, but lately I've had to remind myself that I need to know them as the adults they are currently and are becoming
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Peep's favorites
- 08-10-10
Partucularly Sad Lemons
I wish I had had the benefit of these reviews before I purchased and started listening to this book.
My first bit of irratation come from listening to Aimee Bender's annoying voice. I was at first hopeful that she was just going to read the dedication and intro info but then when I realized that she would be reading the entire book, I became particularly sad.
This sadness has become more pronounced as I continue to listen - I am two hours into the eight hour book and still cannot get interested. The plot is minimal, the writing style unisteresting. If there were a way to get my money refunded, I would ask for it on this book. I think I will just put it to the side and read something else.
Please, listen to the sample and read the other reviews before purchasing this book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lytrell Strayhorn
- 06-03-23
Not quite what I expected
The story seemed a bit all over the place. Very slow parts. I liked the concept but definitely not what I expected.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- jj13
- 09-05-23
This was a long novella
Like so many others, I see this as a book that had so much potential that feels wasted. Interesting concept, but it should have been a a short story instead.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!