The Sweet Escape

At the beginning of Bernice McFadden’s Sugar, we don’t meet Sugar. We meet Jude, so to speak. Jude is the ghost in the story, the crux of every emotional scene in the novel. Jude is the murdered child of Pearl, a woman who befriends her next door neighbor that happens to go by the name ‘Sugar’.

This story begins oh, so right. Niffenegger (you mind if I call her Audrey? That name is a toughie)jumps right into the middle of the story and wades around in it. Our main character, you see… dies on Page One. And I figure if someone dies on Page One, there’s a good reason for it and a good story behind it.

I’m a huge fan of period pieces, especially if the author does a superb job of transporting the reader back to a simpler time. I’m not really a thriller reader, so I had never even thought to read Sandra Brown before. It was a recommended novel on a Kindle list so I picked it up one day a few weeks ago.

arol Lynch Williams presents a heart pounding, engaging novel about a girl growing up in a Polygamist community, under the watchful eye and controlling thumb of a God-like figure, The Prophet. The Chosen One seems ripped from recent headlines about the infiltration of these communities and rescues of children ordered to marry men more than twice their ages, bear children, and become one of several wives.

Here’s what I can say: the plot is intricately weaved and the imagery is VIVID. Flynn is… OMG… I think my new favorite author right now. Grisly and gory but nail bitingly exciting. I’m still spinning from this book.
We meet Libby Day immediately in the book and we’re shocked by such an unlikely protagonist. I think Flynn’s golden arrow is an unlikeable hero, because Libby is just as or more unlikable than the protagonist in Sharp Objects.

Sometimes my method of picking books is really calculated. And then sometimes I just see something and think, ‘hmph. I’ll read that, I guess.’ Sharp Objects was chosen via the latter method. Suffice it to say,I think I started this book sometime last week, maybe over the weekend. It’s Tuesday and I just finished it. Literally a few minutes ago… I’ve been buried in it all weekend.