Sugar, Baby as a title is pretty self explanatory so I did know what to expect from the book before I dived into it. We have a group of young adult women, our protagonist at the very centre of it living in London and living the sugar baby life. Agnes is a young black woman of 22 who grew up in a religious household. Her mother loves church and bible study and strictly prohibits her daughters from indulging in anything that she considers satanic. That means no partying or putting on makeup. Premarital sex is as good as the girls getting a direct entry to hell. So Agnes automatically lives a double life.

Having dropped out of school, Agnes is happy taking up a cleaner job. It is there that she meets Emily, daughter of a rich family who is also a sugar baby. Agnes is quick to involve herself in this glamorous world where she’s showered with expensive bags, being able to eat at fancy restaurants and getting beauty treatments to look like a model. This book is smutty, there’s no doubt about that but as we see Agnes venturing into this whirlwind of a world, it all turns messy very quickly.

It becomes clear early on that Agnes is not one to make wise decisions. As she makes friendly acquaintances with men of all kinds, she suddenly remembers her passion for photography. But just as quickly, she dismisses the idea. It’s hard to know what goes on inside her head and this really put me off. There are also a lot of cliched moments contrary to a refreshing change that I had hoped for. And the men were so typical of what to expect in such stories. Lawyers, mafia looking guys. After a point it got too much.

You know it’s hard to stay with a book when you can’t connect with the protagonist and that’s exactly why it didn’t work for me. Sugar, Baby is everything the name suggests but that’s precisely why it gets a bit boring after a while.

Thank you for the copy @penguinindia ✨