He Never Liked Cake

by Janna Leyde

On a balmy Tuesday during the summer before ninth grade, a car accident on a rain-slicked highway flipped Janna’s safe and happy world upside down, and her adolescence dissolved into a summer of restraining belts, feeding tubes, therapy schedules, and chicken salad sandwiches from the hospital cafeteria. Since that day, Janna’s life has been a navigation through the inescapable struggles of her father’s brain injury, a study of her mother’s resilience and unconditional love, an a challenge to find her own identity and acceptance as an adult. Brain injury is insidious. It’s tricky and tiresome. For those asked to love and support a TBI survivor, the struggles are deeply personal and often unresolved, and the victim’s recovery is repeatedly thwarted by insurmountable obstacles, along with the battles fought with insurance companies for proper patient care and effective treatment.Janna Leyde’s coming-of-age memoir encompasses the acute and lasting effects of brain injury on both survivors and their loved ones. He Never Liked Cake is for children who feel the weight of life crashing down, for families who fight for the new normal, for survivors who fail to see how life has changed—and, for everyone, this is a story about how to embrace life when it doesn’t work out the way we had it planned.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

406 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2013

About the author

Janna Leyde is a writer and certified yoga teacher. She is a regular contributor to health and wellness focused blogs and magazines and has a master’s in journalism from New York University. She grew up near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and now lives in Brooklyn. He Never Liked Cake is her first book.

Reviews

[Janna Leyde]

I'm a little bias, but I think you all should read it, too.

[Abigail]

Powerful. Knowing the author personally as my yoga teacher and yoga business owner, I felt like a Peeping Tom reading this book! It just reinforces the notion that you really never know what any given person has gone through in their life, so never make any assumptions. While painful to go through the journey with Janna and her mother, I am sure she is a stronger and certainly more empathetic person for it. I also was so taken by the fact that her father actually was pretty self aware even with a TBI. Just confirms my observation that other brain related diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer's, we often don't realize that the afflicted has moments of clarity amongst the fog. This is a very fluid book and easy to read. The chapters are just the right length and the story moves along at a steady clip. A great first novel by a very special and talented writer!

[Rosemary]

Heartbreakingly real. Janna takes the reader on a journey through the loss of her beloved father who suffers a traumatic brain injury when she is a young teen, and is never the same father she remembers. Her struggle to breathe with a mountain of grief pressing on her chest, the love and admiration she feels for her mother for being a tower of strength, and the way she always tried to be the perfect child made my throat close up and tears fall before I even knew it was happening. Janna is an incredible writer...read this book.

[Kristin]

Janna's honesty with her story is beautiful. As a reader you are drawn her to her hurt, fears, confusion, denial, acceptance and love. The telling of her journey is real and honest. I highly recommend reading it.

[Juliet Levine]

Janna’s story is incredibly beautiful and raw through all the hardship her family endured. There were so many parts where I could completely relate to Janna through this coming-of-age memoir and others that I could never imagine. Despite the struggle, I was inspired by her mother’s dedication and perseverance and Janna’s strength in her ability to keep moving forward and her dreams alive.

I’ve had the privilege of being one of Janna’s yoga students. I always admired her for being a grounded, welcoming, and witty go-getter. I’m very grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to learn so much more about Janna, because she is truly an exceptional teacher, writer and friend.

This is a story that needed to be written and shared. I hope to read more from Janna and love watching as she grows her yoga business.

[Raygunera]

I found this book while in a hotel room in California trying to figure out how to get my dad, who suffered a TBI in a horrific car accident there, back home to Virginia. Thank you so much for writing your story. We are back home and continuing therapy and the lessons from your book are helping me to get through all the ups and downs. Thank you, again.

[Sarah]

A great book about the lasting effects of TBI and how merely surviving the accident doesn't guarantee a happily ever after. It was also a story about growing up and moving onward from a small town. I especially enjoyed the evolution of the author's fashion choices from Fashion Bug to Levi's Silver Tab jeans to espadrilles.

[Amélie]

This is a great read, even if you don't know anyone with a traumatic brain injury. It's required reading, if you do. Janna Leyde takes you into her world, a girl growing up, finding her own way in life and as a daughter, as she and her family deal with extraordinary circumstances.