Book Fifty-Four: Like Water for Chocolate

Book Fifty-Four: Like Water for Chocolate
Finished: November 2
Pages: 246

I read this one at the behest of Lacey, I think, or Kathy, or someone who told me that The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake was a knock-off of this book. I think maybe if I had read Like Water for Chocolate first, maybe I would agree, but the books are so stylistically different that there really is little comparison except that food is involved with both.
I suppose I liked the book. I suppose, if pressed, I could come up with reasons why I liked it. In another frame of mind I might have loved this book, and I can't really come up with a good reason why I didn't love it. There was just something...off about it. Maybe it was that the book is organized into chapters by month, but the time goes by at a different rate: sometimes it seems like only a few days between chapters, sometimes it feels like several years.
I really didn't like some of the choices that the author made with the characters, made all the more difficult to understand toward the end because I didn't know how many years had gone by. I thought it had been only 2 days between chapters, but that time it was 22 years. A little shocking to discover that much time had passed, and the characters had not grown any wiser.
I really did not like Pedro, and I didn't understand why Tita did. What was so special about him? I mean, he married her sister! What a jerk. I liked her sister, Gertrudis, the most, because she seemed the most honest and true to herself. I liked John, because he was open and honest with Tita about his affections, and because he was a genuinely nice guy. Why would she choose to be with Pedro?
Ugh. Maybe I didn't like the book. It did make me want Mexican food with a vengeance, which was nice.
Good Reading,
Caitlin