A Tangle of Knots by Lisa Graff

I had a definite problem with this book. Interspersed between the story are some of the most scrumptious sounding cake recipes, and I kept wanting to stop and bake, which put me at war with the part of myself that just kept wanting to read. What a delicious dilemma.

The inside flap reads:

In a remarkable world where many people are blessed with a special Talent, eleven-year-old Cady is an orphan with a phenomenal ability for cake baking... and no idea of the journey that Fate set in place for her the moment she was born. But when Cady moves into an upstairs room in the town's Lost Luggage Emporium, she meets a curious cast of characters whose lives are tangled with her own in ways she never could have imagined.

Cake baking, magic, living above a Lost Luggage Emporium? What's not to like?! The reader meets the "curious cast of characters" before Cady does and we get to watch what seems to be a tangle of loose ends turn into a braid of exquisite beauty.

Another recommendation from Nancy Pearl on NPR. HAsn't steered me wrong yet.