However, I think it made the book better because it's written from the point of view of both women.Īnyone who loves novels with friendships as a theme will love this book. I didn't enjoy Pearl's POV quite as much, probably because I find Sugar to be a much more interesting character. I can't wait to find out what Sugar discovers next! I really enjoyed her story and her POV. It's not the sort of story I read often any more, but I'm glad I did and look forward to reading the next in the series. This book will make you laugh and make you cry and will leave you with your jaw dropping at the end. Here she is confronted with hatred from the other women, all except from Pearl, a woman who is suffering her own kind of pain, that of a mother whose only daughter was murdered.

Sugar, abandoned at birth and raised in a brothel, used and abused and full of pain, moves to a small town in Arkansas. Sugar is the story of two broken but otherwise very different women and the healing friendship that transpires between them. Bernice McFadden is a brilliant writer who can tell a terrific story! What a story! Poignant and raw, sweet and tender. Many thanks to the publisher for the book. and packing an unforgettable punch that left me reeling. This is a intensely compulsive read, beautifully written, with twists and turns, of race, hate, murder, secrets, shame, and the power of friendship. McFadden gives us strong, independent women, skilfully developing their characters to great effect and the world of pain and suffering that life had dealt them. Pearl sees Jude in Sugar, both have gaping needs that somehow they fulfil in each other, finding the strength to come to terms with their haunting and tragic history. Sugar's harrowing and horrifying past is revealed in this riveting, emotionally hearbreaking novel, abandoned, never having experienced a childhood, deprived of love, the humiliations and the abuse. The sanctimonious Christian women do not see as one of them, judging and fearing her without knowing her, wanting her gone, but Sugar's presence is going to have a long lasting impact on the town. Set in Arkansas, in the small town of Bigelow, a place seething with gossip, ignorance and judgementalism, Sugar arrives with hopes of starting afresh, but the townsfolk are far from welcoming of this newcomer, whom they regard with suspicion.

Bernice L McFadden's powerful classic multilayered southern American novel evokes the 1950s era with vibrancy and colour, and details the surprising friendship that springs up between neighbours, sex worker, Sugar Lacey, with her in your face attitude, and the still grieving Pearl Taylor, married to Joe, who has never got over the loss of her daughter, Jude, brutally raped and killed, her body discarded by the road 15 years ago, a devastating crime that never saw any form of justice.

Sugar by bernice l mcfadden