TLC Book Tours: The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena

Title: The Taste of Apple Seeds
Author: Katharina Hagena
Format: Paperback
Publisher: William Morrow and Company
Publish Date: February 4, 2014
Source: TLC Book Tours

Why You're Reading This Book:

• You're a fiction fan.
• You like magical realism.
• You like family stories.

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "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."

My Two Cents:

If I could sum up "The Taste of Apple Seeds" with one tagline, it would be filled with family secrets and a dollop of magical realism. This book is the story of Iris who inherits a big, old house filled with lots of family memories. Iris isn't sure that she really wants the house because you don't really get to pick and keep only the good memories.

First off, I want to mention that I love, love, love magical realism. I just think it is such a good element and can really add a bit of sparkle to the right story. I love what the author was able to do with the element in the book. She really made the power and secrets of Iris' family feel really real. I just got sucked in.

The story unfolds slowly with us learning more and more about Iris' family and what happened to each member of the family. The book really focuses mostly on the women of the family. We get to see small pieces of each of them and we get to learn their secrets. The book does ramble a little bit as we are finding out more and more about the family but eventually it gets to what happened and why it played such a big impact on the family (and this is all that I will say as I don't really want to give anything away).

Overall, I enjoyed this story.