Sugar Town Queens

Written by Malla Nunn

Narrated by Bahni Turpin

From Los Angeles Times Book Prize Award winner and Edgar Award nominee Malla Nunn comes a stunning portrait of a family divided and a powerful story of how friendship saves and heals.

When Amandla wakes up on her fifteenth birthday, she knows it's going to be one of her mother's difficult days. Her mother has had another vision. This one involves Amandla wearing a bedsheet loosely stitched as a dress. An outfit, her mother says, is certain to bring Amandla's father back home, as if he were the prince and this was the fairytale ending their family was destined for. But in truth, Amandla's father has long been gone--since before Amandla was born--and even her mother's memory of him is hazy. In fact, many of her mother's memories from before Amandla was born are hazy. It's just one of the many reasons people in Sugar Town give them strange looks--that and the fact her mother is white and Amandla is Black.

When Amandla finds a mysterious address in the bottom of her mother's handbag along with a large amount of cash, she decides it's finally time to get answers about her mother's life. What she discovers will change the shape and size of her family forever. But with her best friends at her side, Amandla is ready to take on family secrets and the devil himself. These Sugar Town queens are ready to take over the world to expose the hard truths of their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9780593397886

Malla Nunn

Malla Nunn was born in Swaziland, southern Africa, but moved to Australia in the 1970s. She studied theatre in America, where she met her husband and began writing and directing short films, three of which – Fade to White, Sweetbreeze and Servant of the Ancestors – won numerous awards and have been shown at international festivals from Zanzibar to New York City. Her first novel, A Beautiful Place to Die (2009), was published internationally and won the Sisters in Crime Davitt Award for Best Adult Crime Novel by an Australian female author. It was also shortlisted in the prestigious US Edgar Awards for Best Novel. Let the Dead Lie was highly commended in the Ellis Peters Historical Crime Awards. Malla and her husband live in Sydney with their two children.

Reviews for Sugar Town Queens

[dairyqueen84 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked this because of the South African township setting. I thought the writing was uneven and things seemed to happen suddenly, no sense of time passing. The Sugar Town Queens became fast friends in less than a week. Amandla falls in love in less than a week. There should have been a sense of time passing which would have been more realistic.

[sennebec · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fifteen year old Amandla is half white and half Black. She lives in Sugar Town, a settlement where poor Blacks live in rusting metal shacks and don't venture out at night. Her mother works, but makes barely enough for them to get by. Much of the time, Amandla feels more like the adult because her mother has memory gaps and flights of fancy where she has her daughter do things, or dress oddly as a way to get her daughter’s father to return. Amandla knows almost nothing about him, or either side of her family. When her mother returns home one afternoon, shaky and more disoriented than usual, it's the moment when everything changes. Amandla looks in her bag to get the house key, she finds a large stack of money and then a cryptic note with an address and instructions for entering a doorway there. What follows is part coming of age, part mystery and a lot of dysfunctional family dynamics. In the process of finding out what happened to her mother and father years before, Amandla learns who really loves her, how many friends she has in Sugar Town, how vile and pervasive racism still is in South Africa, and just how strong she is.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amandla delivers incredible devotion to her deeply mentally challenged mother, to her friends, and eventually to her new neighbors and new white family while at the same time admitting to inner conflicts of "township bitch" vs "rational me."

Her character grows with each new search and challenge with the plot faltering only when her mother offers no reason for not bringing Amandla and her grandmother together for nearly fifteen long years. Racism abounds, as does unexpected violence in a knife attack on Amandla which nearly kills her defending mother.

Amandla's friends, Goodness and Lil' Bit are wonderful contrasts.
Readers may hope for more from Lewis in a sequel.

The Grandfather Gun Episode was contrary to the basic honesty of the plot and added nothing.

As well, with Amanda's constantly predicted death, it was just a letdown to not follow up with the hope that the Family was finally given.

"Live in the Light of Truth or stay behind in the darkness."