Being 21 can be hard, and that’s exactly the case for Agnes Green at the start of Sugar, Baby, Celine Saintclare’s debut novel. She still lives at home, works as a housecleaner, is (nearly) friendless, and is in love with her toxic hookup. Life just isn’t all that exciting.

All of that changes when she meets Emily, a beautiful young woman who lives at one of the houses Agnes cleans. They hit it off, and Emily introduces Agnes into her life of beauty, free alcohol and lavish gifts. How does she do it? Emily is a sugar baby, and she sees the potential in Agnes to sugar as well. Agnes quickly gets swept up into this world, feeling at once like she’s finally found her purpose and that she’s an outsider.

Saintclare does an excellent job of describing nightlife and sugaring in a way that’s simultaneously enticing and makes me feel sick. Glamorizing the night through Agnes’s eyes while also showing the downsides is a careful balance, and Saintclare walks this line perfectly. The vivid details bring everything to life and immediately drew me in. Agnes waltzes through the world as though not really there, facing no consequences for any of her actions, but somehow it worked.

As a mixed race girl from a poor family, Agnes constantly feels out of place amidst the models and club promoters even as she begins to dress like them and become their friends. Saintclare captures these dueling feelings, as well as the magic of high-end nightlife, incredibly vividly. Any trepidations I had about the slow start of the book immediately went away when Agnes hung out with Emily for the first time. These parts of the story (which made up the middle two thirds) felt honest and lived in. That’s probably because, as Saintclare discusses in Vogue, she was a party girl herself.

Unfortunately, the beginning and end of the book didn’t resonate quite as well for me. Agnes’ relationship with Jess, her high school friend, felt tacked on and not thought out enough. I found myself jarred anytime Agnes would announce strong feelings towards that part of her life, as I didn’t have any reason to relate to her or understand why she was acting the way she did. Whenever Agnes acted out, I was shocked and surprised by the abrupt turn things took. There wasn’t enough there for me to feel like it was a deserving character turn. This book could have been better had it been focused a bit more narrowly and perhaps left open ended, because the parts Saintclare did well made the book impossible to put down.

This book was well written and for the most part fascinating, letting me in on a world I previously knew nothing about. Sugar, Baby is a debut novel and I am delighted to see what Saintclare publishes next.

I received an audiobook copy of this book from the Libro.fm influencer program

Find the Book: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Bookshop