To say that twenty-seven year old homebody Josey Cirrini likes sweets is an understatement. Raised by default to attend to her aging, high society mother who is still punishing her for her spoiled childhood, Josey does what any girl in her situation would do: she hides her candy, along with romance books and travel magazines, in a secret compartment in her bedroom closet. That is until one day, she turned to the closet in her time of escapist need and found local waitress and now fleeing fugitive Della Lee Baker hiding within. Under the threat of candy blackmail, Josey soon finds her small, uneventful life changing as she does Della’s bidding. Besides retrieving some of Della Lee’s personal belongings, Josey is making friends with women her age like Chloe Findley, who finds appearing books whenever she needs them, and letting her quiet, unassuming mailman Adam know how she feels about him. But even as she wears her lucky red cardigan, repeatedly sneaks out after her mother’s taken a sleeping pill, and made the forbidden snowman in the front yard of her upscale Bald Slope neighborhood, Josey never could have realized there is more to Della Lee and Chloe than meets the eye, nor how drastically they could change her life.

I waited far too long to pick up this or any of Sarah Addison Allen’s books, but I’m so glad I finally did. All of my best blogging buddies and their dogs have read it already (see below), and since there was not a ho-hum or negative reaction among them, I was never worried about my own response. I told myself I was just waiting for the right time, but I let all these other books get in the way. It took me until my newly formed family book club chose it for its inaugural meeting, but honestly? At this point I have no regrets – I do enough self-punishing in other areas of my life. I am simply too busy being happy to finally know what everyone’s been talking about, pleased in The Sugar Queen and already anticipating reading SAA’s entire backlist as soon as possible.

I find it ironic that what interested me the most yet made me most skeptical of in SAA books – the magic realism – fit seamlessly. Chloe’s books and Josey’s red cardigan seemed to be naturally-occurring parts of their personalities. It was the initial setup that rang a little unrealistic to me. How could anyone in reality be so trapped at twenty-seven and feel so indebted to their mother that they had never moved out and had never had a real life of their own? It seemed too pathetic to be true. But Josey is not pathetic, not at all, and as you slowly get the pieces that make up the complicated relationship she has with her mother you begin to understand Josey’s slave-like commitment to her. Continuing on that honest note I did find it a little a lot strange that anyone would break into the Cirrini house and live in Josey’s closet for more than a night or two, but as time goes on (of course!) I found my doubts utterly unfounded. Doubts and lengthy tangents aside, the sharp yet warm writing won me over from the first chapter as I connected immediately to Josey and Della Lee. There were enough pages with quotes I wanted to remember so I actually jotted the page numbers down as I read, which I rarely do. Of course this makes choosing a passage to share all the more difficult. I finally settled on an early exchange between Josey and Della Lee:

“So who is he?” Della Lee asked from the closet.

“Excuse me?”

“The man you ran out of here to see.”

Josey immediately sat up straighter. She put the catalog on the desk and opened it, startled. How on earth did she know that? “I don’t know what you mean.”

Della Lee was silent for a while as Josey ate cookies and pretended to look at the catalog. “It feels like he’s taken your heart, doesn’t it?” Della Lee finally said. “Like he’s reached in and pulled it from you. And I bet he smiles like he doesn’t know, like he doesn’t know he’s holding your heart in his hand and you’re dying from him.”

It was the truest, purest, saddest thing she had ever heard spoken. It was like hearing gospel for the first time, how it shocked you, how it made you afraid because you thought no one could see inside you. Josey leerily turned to look at Della Lee.

“You’re wondering how I know. Girls like us, when we love, it takes everything we have. Who is he?”

“Like I would tell you.”

Ah, the truth in such statements; the words struck me in the most comforting way. I’m not sure if any of the subtle touches of magic in The Sugar Queen or frankly any of Sarah Addison Allen’s novels can come close to topping Chloe’s power of summoning any book out of thin air, just when she needs it, to have it reappear at home, at work, or at a restaurant if she’s ignoring it. This is a book lover’s dream. What a way of having your books always with you. From the writing to Chloe and Jake’s troubled relationship and the twist ending, everything about this book ended up coming through for me in spades. As novels set in small towns aspire, The Sugar Queen was a cozy read full of flawed yet likable and real characters, sweet romances, and a charming North Carolina town. You’ll be rooting for them all to find their own little corner of happiness while enjoying the magic of appearing books, inexplicable boiling water, and the smell of peppermint oil. I cannot wait to settle in with another of Sarah Addison Allen’s books. Question is, which one?

Second Opinions
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