Sugar - Bernice L. McFadden

Author: Bernice L. McFadden

Sugar Lacey Book 1

Genre: African-American Fiction.

Rating: 3.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: I liked this quite a lot. Though it has a few flaws, considering it was written 22 years ago and was a debut work, it is very impactful and thought-provoking.

Story Synopsis:

After the brutal death of her daughter Jude fifteen years ago, Pearl, a faithful Christian, loving wife, and kind neighbour, is wrapped in grief. But when Sugar shifts into the opposite house, Pearl is as curious as the rest of the small town of Bigelow. Their connection gets off to a rocky start but soon transforms into an unlikely friendship. Unlikely because it is very clear to almost everyone that Sugar is a prostitute. Is such a friendship sustainable over the long run?

Where the book worked for me:

✔ Loved the truthful depiction of a small town Black community in 1950s America. An OwnVoices book, the author doesn’t resort to an extremely positive or stereotypical portrayal but sticks to what is real.

✔ There is some scandalous content but not as much as I had expected from a book with a prostitute as the mc.

✔ Sugar and Pearl are sketched very well. I loved how beautifully their relationship with each other, with the townspeople and with themselves was portrayed. Both of them are handling different kinds of grief and their unlikely bond comes across as surprising but still with a possibility of healing for both.

✔ I think your liking for the book will depend firmly on how you view the content and what you want from the ending. Want a traditional HEA? Not gonna happen – what you get is an ending that is gritty and realistic. This works far better for me than a forced resolution of all ends. Want a lot of introspection by Sugar about her life as a prostitute? Not present. Though Sugar is the titular character, the story is as much Pearl’s as Sugar’s.

✔ For a debut author and an untrained one at that, the plot is pretty complex. I had to take a note of all the characters and their interconnections.

Where the book could have worked better for me:

❌ There is a lot of back and forth in the timelines. This, combined with the number of characters, makes it a complicated book to read when you aren’t able to focus well. I would have liked a better transition between the timeframes.

❌ Despite the small length, it is quite slow-paced. Yes, you can skip-read and go faster, but I feel there were a lot of nuances in the descriptions I would have missed out on if I had jumped over them. So worth reading every word at its pace.

❌ The dates in the story are quite incorrect. The dates and the facts in the timeline don't make sense with each other.

Overall, despite the flaws, a very satisfying book. I’m definitely going to read the sequel, and hope it resolves the few dangling threads from this narration without bending over backwards to provide a HEA. Let’s see how it goes.