Book Review: "Sugar" by Mia Ballard

Cheap books on Kindle and warm cups of coffee whilst it rains outside are two great additions to any day. Needless to say, I stayed up quite a while reading this one. The rain had stopped, the coffee was finished and it was probably about 1am. I'm not going to lie, this is definitely my kind of book. Along with novels such as Mrs March by Virginia Feito and Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh (plus others) these books about psycho-women who do their best to get their way really has a hold on me from time to time. This book is no exception. Except for maybe...one, small problem.

Satara is married to a less than impressive man and finds out that after some time, he has been cheating on her with her best friend - a muted woman named Lilah. So, instead of breaking up with him, she murders him brutally and dumps his body under a tree. Once that is over, we are taken on a wild ride through therapy sessions where Satara's inner-monologue is basically cynical of the whole situation even though on the outside she tries to answer questions (she can be less than co-operative from time to time, often threatening to kill herself if certain things are probed). Eventually, we get a bit of a look into Satara's past. The writer makes a point of depicting her main character as morally grey. We are meant to like her and her presence is supposed to represent the presence of any woman really, but then again we are meant to also find certain aspects of her annoying. This is a great way of portraying a character as comically realistic and I for one, enjoy it quite a bit. It definitely reminds me of the main character in Mrs March by Virginia Feito.

As I said, we get a look into Satara's past and we find that apart from murdering her husband, she has killed before. She has been in rocky relationships and murdered former lovers. She has been highly judgemental in her inner-monologues of men who are overweight and want to meet her. She takes LSD almost every day because of a fling she had with a delivery driver and yet, she is perfectly fine with all this microdosing. I was quite pleased to see that the main character is a woman who enjoys speaking her mind, but I was also concerned that the LSD would mean she would slip up and possibly get found out sooner or later. The way the author layers the tension like this definitely makes the reader more interested in the life of the protagonist, wondering why we are being taken back and forth through time like this. But it also makes us wonder about her reasonings - why is it that taking the life of a perverted man so satisfying? Is that not just the ultimate female fantasy?

Well you'd think so wouldn't you?

This is where the books falls off the hill a little. The ending is rushed and incomprehensible. The final few chapters focus on explaining the plot to us whilst also trying to shoehorn the end chapter in. I'm not saying it is a bad book, I'm saying that the first half of the book feels like it had been written well and the last half reads more like someone said 'Hey, Chat! Finish this book!' and allowed ChatGPT to write the final few chapters (including the epilogue). I was quite surprised to be honest since the first 60% or so was so good, so enthralling, pretty clever and brilliant. The ending was so disappointing that I did wonder whether the author had intended that ending to actually happen or whether they just couldn't see what the ending would be. I was lost for words.

All in all, I would still recommend you read this book since I think it definitely has some great things to be taken in. The author's writing for most of the book is incredible, packed with strange descriptions and odd similes that leave you rereading them to make sure you got the right image in your mind. The ending though, that stays with me for how bad it was.