The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
Southern Reading Challenge Three #1
Fiction, Published 2008
Read June 2009
4/5
From the Cover:
Twenty-seven-year-old Josey Cirrini is sure of three things: winter in her North Carolina hometown is her favorite season, she’s a sorry excuse for a southern belle, and sweets are best eaten in the privacy of her hidden closet.
Review:
Once again Sarah Addison Allen impresses with her yummy confections. Josie’s predictable and somewhat reclusive lifestyle is turned upside down when Della Lee Baker, a girl known for being strange, shows up in Josie’s closet. Della Lee will not only not leave Josie’s closet, but she discovers Josie’s secret stash of sweets and romance novels. Josie agrees to let Della Lee stay for a few days so she won’t tell anyone about her stash. Not only does Josie have to run her mother around town for all her social gatherings, but Della Lee soon sends her on a few errands of her own.
It seems everyone at Bald Slope has secrets. Della Lee sends Josie around town in order to get her out of her room and away from her mother as well as put Josie in the path of learning the truth about her father, the town’s founder. Josie eventually closes in on the mysteries of the town and its people, especially what led Della Lee to her closet in the first place.
Each chapter of The Sugar Queen is cleverly themed with a different candy to reveal a new plot twist with Lemon Drops, SweeTarts, Sugar Daddy, Life Savers to name a few. All the book lovers will love Chloe, the sandwich shop owner.
If you’ve got a sweet tooth, you can’t go wrong with this one!
Book Quotes:
It was embarrassing enough being such a sorry excuse for a Southern belle. Her weight, her unfortunate hair, her secret dreams of leaving her mother who needed her, of leaving and never looking back. Respectable daughters took care of their mothers. Respectable daughters did not hide enormous amounts of candy in their closets. -p. 6
She’d found the door between the two closets by accident, when she would sit in her closet and eat candy she hid in her pockets when she was young. Back then she used to hide from her mother in the secret space just to worry her, but now she stocked it with magazines, paperback romances and sweets. Lots and lots of sweets. Moonpies and pecan rolls, Chick-O-Sticks and Cow Tales, Caramel Creams and Squirrel Nut Zippers, Red Hots and Bit-O-Honey, boxes upon boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes. The space had a comforting smell to it, like Halloween, like sugar and chocolate and crisp plastic wrappers. -p. 9-10
She [Chloe] could remember very clearly the first time it happened to her. Being an only child on the farm miles from town, she was bored a lot. When she ran out of books to read, it only got worse…She’d find them on her bed, in her closet, in her favorite hideouts around the property. And they were always books she needed. Books on games or novels of adventure when she was bored. Books about growing up as she got older…Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her. p.35-36
