Books like Sugar

At first, I wasn’t sure about this book’s “voicy” urban slang. However, I fell more and more for “Ghost” (Castle, the main character, who has a cousin named “King”) as I learned about his painful history.

Castle is a lightning-fast runner, and I’m a sucker for characters that have passion for the athletic event they love, especially individual sports but on a team—cycling, swimming, running, boxing, fencing, etc. I couldn’t help but root for him, even when I winced at many of his decisions.

Although far from perfect, he’s kind, which allows him to fit into his new “tribe”: the track team. I was completely sucked in. It’s a fast read with a lot of depth and a cast of rich and varied characters. I loved it. 

This is the story of a girl named Rose, who is autistic and obsessed with homonyms. She lives with her father who’s often impatient with her needs and abandons her to drink at the local bar. Her mother has vanished, and Rose turns to her sympathetic uncle and her beloved new dog for comfort. When her dad lets the dog out during a storm, Rose and her uncle find the dog and realize it already has an owner. She learns the truth of her mother’s disappearance and moves in with her uncle. 

Once again, here’s a story about the healing relationship that can exist between a kid and an animal. And as the sibling of a person with Down syndrome and a former special education teacher, I’m impressed with the author’s respectful portrayal of a girl on the autism spectrum.

Clever, comic-book reading, word-loving Flora is more cynical than ever since her parents’ separation. She’s sure her mother loves a shepherdess lamp more than her own daughter. When Flora saves a squirrel sucked up by a neighbor’s vacuum and he returns with super strength and the ability to understand language and write poetry, she finds a kindred spirit. I love this book for its colorful (human and squirrel) characters and subtle exploration of family dynamics. And I love that Flora’s journey, which is emotional rather than physical, isn’t wrapped up with a tidy bow at the end.

This is a book that explores deeply the role that fathers can play in our life. Lily is a transgender girl, which confounds her father and causes friction in their family. Norbert, nicknamed Dunkin, takes meditation for bipolar disorder—the same illness that caused his father to commit suicide. I appreciate this book for so many reasons; Gephart treats the transgender character with deep respect, and she doesn’t shy away from the topic of parental suicide. A children’s librarian once told me that suicide was too heavy for middle-grade fiction, but I disagree. In fact, I based a key plot point in my own novel on the experience of one of my past high school students whose father committed suicide when she was still in middle school.

Lee depicts the world of San Francisco through the eyes of a young Chinese-American boy, navigating the grownup world of race, class, and urban life, and trying to find the place where he fits, in between his family and ethnicity, and his modern American sensibility. Also worth noting, Kai-Ting’s encounters with African-Americans, Chicanos and other Chinese people, in a novel that has nary a white person in it. 

The railroad worker and the interpreter; The Hong Kong beauty/midwife and the fishmonger’s daughter; the Kung fu master’s family turned tong bosses and the civic leaders and charity organizers; the merchants and the opium dealers; the church ladies and the rice wine hooch brewers; the lofan (white) Aunt Elva with a painful secret….

These are some of the unforgettable characters from Chin’s sprawling family. I loved this glimpse into the Chinese American experience in New York City during the same time my family was muddling through in Georgia. I also have reason to believe my grandfather knew some of these characters personally through his correspondence and Chinese liberation work. Chin did honor to all of the ancestors with this skillful weaving of history, memory, anecdote, and a daughter/granddaughter’s loving intuition.

Amy Tan is a master at telling stories that explore the complex dynamics of family relationships.

I’ve read a lot of her books, but The Hundred Secret Senses is my favorite because I adore Kwan, the main character’s half-sister from China. Kwan has a special secret that she can see and speak to ghosts, but Olivia always dismisses her as a little crazy and only pretends to believe her stories.

I love this book because it made me laugh out loud on multiple occasions and because it was so relatable.

We all have family members that we both love and can’t stand at the same time. This book goes back and forth between the 1990s and the 1800s.

If you love books about sisters, you need to read this one!

The subtitle, Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris, drew me to this memoir of a woman stranded in the city of her dreams without her husband. She fills her lonely days learning about French food. I enjoyed the memoir’s structure. Each chapter studies an iconic local dish: the history of the dish, the way it is made, her travels to find it, and tasting...lots of tasting. Her recipes, adjusted for American kitchens, are the bonus de resistance.  

But Mah doesn’t write only about food. She also shares her struggles with loneliness, missing her husband, and finding her way around France on her own. I totally recommend this personal and informative memoir by a Chinese American Francophile. 

The experience of being a teenage exchange student living with a Beijing family whose mother is dying of cancer and whose father makes an aborted sexual pass on her marked Solimine deeply enough to inspire this novel. The author wisely shifts the focus away from herself and adopts the role of frame narrator as she reconstructs the family’s history and events leading up to her arrival, where she inserts herself into the story. The narrative unfolds in flashbacks, impressionistic vignettes, and haunting poetic imagery to capture fleeting moments which build in intensity. It’s the kind of novel readers may not find easygoing on first acquaintance – the cracked-glass cover design nicely conveys the initial impression – but promises to improve on rereading.

If you love a quirky narrator, this is your perfect entry point into historical fiction. In 1890 Atlanta, our heroine—Jo Kuan—works as a lady’s maid by day and offers up wit and wisdom as a secret advice columnist by night. 

The voice in this one is what had me wrapped around Jo’s funny, sharp, insightful little finger. Expect to laugh, get angry, unravel a few mysteries, and learn a few dark things about American history along the way. There’s a reason this book was a Reese’s Book Club pick.