The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

From the cover:

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 slice.

This is a cute story and the writing is excellent. Aimee Bender gives detailed descriptions of each of the character's actions, drawing you into their world. However, I found the lack of quotation marks (absolutely none) very distracting and gave up reading after the first couple of chapters.

I'd be interested to know what others thought of the novel.