The Sugar Queen

Goodness, how I love Sarah Addison Allen books. She is real, whimsical, and mystical all at once. That's quite the combination! And I love books in which books are a main character. And the books in this book are hilarious!

Main character Josey is strong, capable and a little damaged, just like most women in the world. She is a very likable character, and you are rooting for her from the first page.

Surrounded by flawed characters, each person has a struggle to work through, and does so beautifully throughout the story. It's a book about love, overcoming fear, accepting fate, and letting go of the past. Wrap that up with a bow of magically appearing books and the hint of a murder, and you have a delicious reading treat!

Recommended.

Even though there’s some sadness here and some danger, there’s coziness, too, with book-related magic I enjoyed, a home I coveted, and plenty of food descriptions, all in a wintery setting.

There’s an element of this story that you might discover via a spoiler or by chance figure it out early like I did, don’t let that stop you from continuing, it actually doesn’t hurt the reading experience, I felt like having that awareness added to the emotional impact throughout the story.

I didn’t love the stuff with Chloe and Julian, the guy was just so overtly slimy and even though I knew Chloe wasn’t in the best state of mind, and all women seem to be magnetized by how this guy looks (a physical description that didn’t at all show more appeal to me), it was still a struggle for me to understand this otherwise seemingly intelligent character choosing to spend time with him.

Both romantic relationships had a decent amount of chemistry, one was more complicated than the other though and I thought that one wrapped up maybe a little too neatly considering the circumstances.

I was a little disappointed that an important conversation between two of the characters never materialized in the end, it was merely hinted that it would happen in the near future, still, the interactions you do see involving Josey and Della, and Josey and Chloe, were often heartening and full of encouragement, the bonds formed among them were really the star here. show less

This book is a delectable delight! It is sweet, but not syrupy, sunny but not sunburn rendering!

The lovely host of characters are charming, but not sickeningly stomach-ache producing.

Strong and vulnerable women learn that life is not a bowl of cherries and sugar daddies are not necessary for fulfillment.

Chubby, food obsessed Josey Cirrini has a closet of hidden treats. She hides twinkies, gum balls and all sorts of goodies. As an only child whose deceased father was the hero of the town, she is left with memories and a very intense, overwhelmingly domineering mother.

Her life dramatically changes when she finds the town
bad girl hidden in her closet. Hiding from her near do well boyfriend, Delta Lee, camps out in Josey's space and in the show more process becomes a fairy God like figure prompting Josey to come out of her shell, break the bonds of her mother and embrace non-food delights!

As Delta Lee encourages Josey to act on her feelings toward the mail man, Josey begins a wonderful journey and in the process discovers long-hidden secrets regarding her father and her mother.

Woven in the mix is Chloe, a broken hearted waitress who befriends Josey.

As the story unfolds the three women learn their strengths and vulnerabilities.

I like this book! Sarah Addison Allen weaves magical images that remain with the reader long after the last page is turned.

Highly Recommended! show less

Josey hides away from the world eating her way through her secret stash of candy until Della Lee inexplicably moves into her closet and Josey is forced to face the outside world with all that it entails. I enjoyed the magic parts in this immensely, especially the books that follow Chloe around are hilarious, but overall this is way too much chick-lit for me and the ending is way more sugary than any candy Josey could have eaten.

Josie Cirrini wakes up to find a woman has moved into her closet. The closet she kept her secret stash of candy, cakes, and romance novels. The closet where she hides from her mother. Her mother who has never forgiven Josie for being a wild child when she was just a little girl. A mother who has made Josie her personal servant and chauffeur, ensuring Josie will have no life of her own.

That is until the woman took up residence in Josie's closet. She pushes Josie into making a new friend, declaring her love for the mailman Josie pines for, and generally learning to live her own life.

"The Sugar Queen" in another magical book from Allen. I love that each character gets a full story, from the woman in the closet to the Cirrini's housekeeper. show more They all have the touch of magic I love in her books. There are so many wonderful aspects to them that just light up the story. Does it get any better then having books magically find one of the characters? Even a character who is generally unlikable finds happiness in the end.

I don't think I could say I have a favorite of any of the three books Allen has now (can't wait for the fourth, but at least it will be a fine birthday present to myself)I love them all equally. They all will definitely be on my reread list. show less

A little bit of a slow start, but I ended up really loving this book. It's a gentle story with some steel behind it; four women, lives intertwined in various ways, gradually discover themselves over the course of the book. There's just a hint of magic thrown in, but the characters, especially the main one, are well drawn -- I definitely cared about what happened to them. I love books about women finding their strengths, and this is a lovely one.

One small complaint: I still have no idea why it's called The Sugar Queen. Unless I reeeally missed something, there's no queen, no sugar, no anything that resembles the title. That bothers me, because five years from now I'm going to remember this book and I'm going to have no idea what it was show more called because the title was so out of left field. show less

I knew the second I saw this that it was pure 'Chick Lit'; everything about it screams the genre. For a mere $5 I figured it wouldn't hurt to have some fluff to pass time with. While it is Fluff, it surprised me by being far more profound than the cover blurb promised. The characters are all experts in being profoundly miserable, but this doesn't sour the story but instead makes it bittersweet. Allen's language may not be expert or eloquent but its simplicity makes her characters very easy to sympathize with and makes the pages fly by. I was put off by the writing in the first two pages or so, it sounded forced and hackneyed, but that is one of the few problems with this novel. Towards the end, the sense of time in the book kind of show more falls apart, since we are told in one sentence in the middle of a scene that a week or so has passed. I was also confused as to why Della Lee is still around at the end of the book. I also think, while the epistolar ending was a nice touch, the last chapter might have been the better place to end, just having so much more impact. Personally, I would like to have seen them molded together somehow while keeping Josey's revelation as the last sentence in the book. What I really enjoyed was the amount of "magic" in the story. Its never mentioned as such, it was more of an inherent quirky character of the setting that nobody seemed to question and took in stride. This gave a kind of sparkle to what might have only been a so-so read for me. What really caught me though, were Allen's characters, so fleshed out and wrapped up in their own private misery, so relatable in their efforts to find happiness. Not far into the book, I could not help but think that it was very similar to Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic, and even though Allen's writing lacks the finesse of Hoffman, I enjoyed Sugar Queen so much more than Practical Magic because while I could appreciate the characters pains and joys, I wasn't made to wade though the muck of their personal issues. Sugar Queen is much lighter and refreshing and satisfying read, and didn't make me feel that I'd rotted my cranium with Brain Candy. show less