AimeeKay Review: The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena

Standalone
241p.
Available Now
Publisher: William Marrow and Company
Source: From publisher for review

When Iris unexpectedly inherits her grandmother's house in the country, she also inherits the painful memories that live there. 

Iris gives herself a one-week stay at the old house, after which she'll make a decision: keep it, or sell it. The choice is not so simple, though, for her grandmother's cottage is an enchanting place where currant jam tastes of tears, sparks fly from fingertips, love's embrace makes apple trees blossom, and the darkest family secrets never stay buried. 

As Iris moves in and out of the flicker between remembrance and forgetting, she chances upon a forgotten childhood friend who could become more. 

The Taste of Apple Seeds is a bittersweet story of heartbreak and hope passed down through the generations.

AimeeKay's Thoughts:

I really tried to get into Taste. I wanted to like it, I really did. The story itself was interesting, but there were certain factors that really made it hard to enjoy. It's hard to separate what I enjoyed from what I didn't because it seemed to go hand in hand.

I thought the story itself was interesting. Iris has been left her grandmother's home and she has to figure out whether she wants to keep it or not. As she tries to decide, she ends up finding out more about her family, and herself, then she ever realized. It also explores people's memories and how someone's memory of an event can seem to change the event itself . The problem I had with the story was that it just seemed to lack any point. Yes, there are mysteries and family secrets, but they either don't get solved, or there just doesn't seem to be a reason for them. Plus the way it jumped between different memories really wasn't as seamless as it could have been and it gave the narrative a very jerky sensation. At the end of the story it just left me with an empty and unresolved feeling.

I have to say I did love some of the authors descriptions. They really brought the house and characters to life. However, even while I was being pulled into the authors world, there were times that the descriptions seemed to trip over themselves. I'm not sure if this is the fault of the author, or a fault in the translation. I felt while I was reading that it probably was more something that was lost in translation, since I have had similar issues with other translated works as well.