Description

The intoxicating, shocking, darkly funny debut that took #BookTok by storm! Discover the glamorous, hedonistic but equally twisted and dangerous world of Sugar, Baby.
Featured in:
VOGUE: Best Books of the Year
ELLE: Hottest Summer Reads
HARPER’S BAZAAR: Best Unconventional Romances
Agnes Green’s life is going nowhere. She’s 21, living at home with her fiercely religious Caribbean mother, working as a cleaner by day and spending the nights with her boring, pretentious stoner boyfriend.
Until she meets Emily, and everything changes.
Emily is a model…and a sugar baby: a young woman living a lavish lifestyle funded by rich older men. It’s the escape Agnes has been looking for: a life of fancy tasting menus, private jets and expensive designer gifts.
But as Agnes enters the world of the sugar baby, she begins to glimpse the dark costs that lurk beneath glamour. As she strays further and further from her mother and the life she knew, she begins to wonder: just how far is she willing to go for the life she once dreamed of?
In raw, vivid prose Celine Saintclare captures the glamorous, high-octane world of sugar babies. A wild, provocative ride that you won’t forget!
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‘The perfect beach read: chaotic, darkly funny and keeps you on your toes’ Elle UK

‘A bold, daring take on the wild, unconventional world of sugar babies’ Harper’s Bazaar

‘Shows the grit alongside the glamour, feels like a document of the moment’ Vogue

Publisher Review

[Sugar, Baby] interrogates clout, desirability and pleasure. It’s the perfect beach read: chaotic, darkly funny and keeps you on your toes. — Liv Little, author of Rosewater * ELLE UK * A bold, daring take on a conventional romance novel, Sugar Baby takes a look at the wild and controversial world of sugar babies and sugar daddies. It asks probing questions about love and lifestyle, belonging and yearning and what we are prepared to sacrifice for what we want… * Harper’s Bazaar * Smart and thought-provoking… Touching on topics ranging from sex work to race and privilege, Sugar, Baby is entrancing from start to finish * Shondaland * This is a propulsive read that tackles myriad attitudes toward sex work, from condemnation to celebration, through a distinctly feminist lens. Accompanying the partying with perceptive social commentary, Saintclare refuses to romanticize the gritty details of sugaring – inviting the reader into a whirlwind of champagne, sex, and money that is at times claustrophobic, scary, and toxic. Saintclare modernizes outdated sex-work narratives, honoring the bonds formed between women instead. * Kirkus Reviews * I’m going to be recommending this brilliant book to EVERYBODY. A pygmalion-esque exploration of sex work, our obsession with beauty and youth, family, religion, female friendship and SO MUCH MORE. Glamorous, and dark, and hopeful all at once. * Katie Bishop, author of The Girls of Summer * Saintclare debuts with a provocative tale of a 21-year-old cleaner drawn into sex work … This powerful story makes [her] one to watch. * Publishers Weekly * Celine Saintclare’s captivating debut, Sugar, Baby, is, on its surface, about the limitless power of beauty, but underneath that narrative lurks a second, darker one, in which Saintclare shows us in heartbreaking detail that there are indeed limits to what that power can buy. Sugar, Baby is an elegantly crafted bait-and-switch, where a story about the ease and glamour of sex work cracks open to reveal a deeper and more delicious secret: that the true sweetness of life lies not in the comfort of being kept, but in the autonomy we are able to maintain for ourselves. And the beauty of that kind of living-hand-made and hard-won-is priceless. — Destiny O. Birdsong, author of NOBODY’S MAGIC A witty, propulsive and intimate examination of sexual commerce, the painful pleasures of self-objectification, and the liberatory power of art-making featuring a tenderhearted heroine I never stopped caring about. Sugar, Baby is everything. — Chantal V. Johnson, author of POST-TRAUMATIC Saintclare’s writing sizzles – she has a knack for the sensual, making even the mundane feel like a revelation. I was absolutely sucked into Agnes’ world, she took me by the hand and didn’t let me go until the final pages, wondering what becomes of all the characters we come to know and love. — Tembe Denton-Hurst, author of HOMEBODIES A rich, provocative and layered pastry, a decadent dessert, take a bite and become intoxicated. Sugar, Baby details the pursuit of female pleasure, capturing the bold exploits of a group of young women in London who are ‘sugar babies’. Darkly funny and likeable. With sharp commentary on the female body and the intersection of shame and pleasure, Saintclare’s debut is smart, sexy and peppered with wit. Both entertaining and deeply thought provoking, Sugar, Baby is potent with the essence of desire and sexuality. — Alice Hawthorne * nb. Magazine * Sugar baby lifestyles, complex family relationships, and coming-of-age epiphanies are explored with page-turning aplomb in this devastatingly gripping debut.

Absolutely addictive, Celine Saintclare’s Sugar Baby debut is shot-through with top-notch characterisation and subtle commentary on everything from hypersexualisation and the ethics of sex work, to religious upbringings, imbalances of power, and the need to feel needed. It’s a triumph of a page-turner.

Emotionally engaging, and 100% absorbing, after this slam dunk of a debut, I can’t wait to read what Celine Saintclare writes next. * LoveReading * Sugar, Baby is a daring novel that explores the commodification of desire and the body and the trappings of respectability politics in a world that profits off our shame. With Agnes, Saintclare has created an unforgettable narrator who is full of bravery, vulnerability, and heart. — Claire Jimenez, author of WHAT HAPPENED TO RUTHY RAMIREZ A must-read * PureWow *