Review: Cake by Joyce Magnin

Title: Cake: Love, Chickens, and a Taste of Peculiar
Author: Joyce Magnin

Publisher: Zondervan

Publication date: December 25, 2013

Genre(s): Middle Grade (Fantasy)

Source: Author
Format: ARC

Pages: 352

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More than frosting filled those cakes... Wilma Sue seems destined to go from one foster home to the next---until she is sent to live with sisters and missionaries, Ruth and Naomi. Do they really care about Wilma Sue, or are they just looking for a Cinderella-style farmhand to help raise chickens and bake cakes? As Wilma Sue adjusts to her new surroundings and helps deliver 'special' cakes, Wilma Sue realizes there's something strange going on. She starts looking for secret ingredients, and along the way she makes a new friend, Penny. When Penny and her mother hit a rough patch, Naomi decides to make her own version of cake---with disastrous results. Then tragedy strikes the chickens, and all fingers point to Wilma Sue---just when she was starting to believe she could at last find a permanent home with Ruth and Naomi. Will the sisters turn her out, or will she discover what it feels like to be truly loved?

Wilma Sue is a 12 year old girl who seems to be destined to spend her life hopping from one foster home to another......until she is put into the grey house of two sisters, Ruth and Naomi. As Wilma Sue gets comfy in the new house, she helps Naomi deliver special cakes to neighbors and discovers a strange secret. The cakes seem to have the power to make things happen to people who eat the cake, like making chairs float and magically putting goldfish in lemonade pitchers. Now, Wilma Sue is determined to find the secret ingredient in the mysterious cakes and finds out what it means to have a real family. 

This book is a really good book. The author has a great flow and plot line; I want to read this book again! I can't really relate to any of the characters but maybe you can. I don't really enjoy the parts where snotty Penny is involved because it reminds me WAY to much of my little sister. There are some really good parts to the story, like reading about what happens to people who eat the cakes. 

There is a lovely and happy ending that makes you feel like you already know what's going to happen after you close the book. It's one of those endings where you know everything's going to be ok, so there is no need for a sequel. The author writes in first person, and she never adds (or leaves out) to many details. This book is incredibly good and you should read it too.