Sugar, Baby
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2.6 • 16 Ratings
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2024 BY VOGUE, ELLE, NYLON, NPR, PURE WOW, SHONDALAND, BOOK RIOT and more!
In the vein of Luster and Queenie, an unflinching portrayal of high-paid sex work in the age of the internet-an intoxicating, bold debut from a dazzling new voice.
Sugar, Baby follows Agnes, a mixed-race 21-year-old whose life seems to be heading nowhere. Still living at home, she works as a cleaner and spends all her money in clubs on the weekends searching for distractions from her mundane life. That is until she meets Emily, daughter of one of her cleaning clients, who lives in London and works as a model . . . and a sugar baby, dating rich older men for money.
Emily's life is the escape Agnes has been longing for-extravagant tasting menus, champagne on tap, glamorous hotels with unlimited room service, designer gifts from dates who call her beautiful. But this new lifestyle is the last straw for her religious mother Constance.
Kicked out of her family home, Agnes moves in with Emily and the other sugar babies in their fancy London flat and is drawn deeper and deeper into their world. But these women come from money: they possess a safety net Agnes does not. And as she is thrown from one precarious relationship to the next-a married man who wants to show off the glamourous, exotic girl on his arm; a Russian billionaire's wife who makes Agnes central to a sex party in Miami-she finds herself searching for fulfillment just as desperately as she was before.
A compelling journey of self-discovery that offers sharp commentary on race, beauty, and class, Sugar, Baby is an electric, original, spellbinding novel that will keep readers turning the pages until the very end.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Saintclare debuts with a provocative tale of a 21-year-old cleaner drawn into sex work. Agnes, who is Black, cleans for a rich white woman named Camila and lives in a deteriorating suburb outside of London with her Pentecostal Christian mother, Constance. While on the job, Agnes rummages through Camila's adult daughter Emily's childhood room and steals a sky-blue suspender belt, before encountering the blonde and alluring Emily in the house. Emily sees potential in Agnes and offers to show her the ropes of high-paid "sugaring," in which a client pays for a steady relationship. After Agnes shares a night out with a client named Matthew, Constance catches her in a lie about babysitting for a cousin and kicks her out of the house. Agnes moves in with Emily and three models in their flat in South Kensington, where she transforms herself with lip injections, a new hairstyle, and borrowed clothes. Though she enjoys the work's perks—Matthew buys her an expensive bag and pays her handsomely in exchange for sex twice a month—the other end of the bargain begins to weigh on her. Things come to a head after Agnes travels to Miami with another client and is pushed into a compromising situation by his jealous wife. Saintclare is best when portraying sex work's mental toll on Agnes as she struggles to keep herself from having feelings for her clients and starts remembering Constance's "God is watching you" refrain. This powerful story makes Saintclare one to watch.
