Thank you to PenguinTeen for sending me this eARC in exchange for an honest review! Malla Nunn always has really interesting things to say about race and class, and this book is no exception. She paints a vivid picture of her characters' lives in South Africa while adding layers of mystery to keep the reader intrigued. Amandla is a strong character who you can't help but root for, and it was lovely to meet her supportive friends and neighbors. It was fun to read a (slightly) more lighthearted book from Nunn after being introduced to her through When the Ground Is Hard.

This is an engaging novel that takes readers on an enthralling emotional journey. The book weaves a tale that is equal parts heartwarming and thought-provoking, leaving readers eager for more. What sets it apart is its exploration of themes. The book delves into complex human emotions and societal issues, offering valuable insights that leave you pondering long after you've finished reading. It's a story that makes you reflect on the world around you, which is a testament to the author's ability to provoke thought.

I hate it took me so long to get to this book because it’s simply amazing. I experienced a range of emotions reading this story, but if you’re in need of a good, cathartic cry, this just might be the read for you because I teared up no less than three times. The book was funny too with characters that had so much heart and young people who weren’t afraid to speak their minds. It really highlights that for as many awful bigots that exist out there, there’s plenty more people who are loving and accepting. This book was also truly the definition of found family as Amandla carves a family out of the little she started with. Overall, I can’t recommend this read enough, especially for people trying to read more contemporary books that take place outside of the US.

Malla Nunn’s Sugar Town Queens surprised me. I was not too sure what to expect with this young adult contemporary book — particularly as I have really heard nothing about it. It was SO good. This book follows Amandla who lives in a township known as Sugar Town with her mother, Annalisa, who sometimes gets these strange notions. On her fifteenth birthday, Annalisa decides to dress Amandla up in a blue cloth dress in hopes it will bring Amandla’s father back. It doesn’t. Instead, what happens is an incident with Annalisa where Amandla finds a stack of cash and an address in Annalisa’s purse. This then unfolds into an understanding about Annalisa’s white family and where Amandla comes from.

I really loved this book — even as it broke my heart. I loved that there was strong bonds of friendship being formed between Amandla, Little Bit, and Goodness. The three take on the world, as it is. The answers we got about Annalisa were so sad, particularly what happened to make her not all there, so to speak. I love that there was triumph and family in the end. This book is fast paced, interesting, and wonderfully written. It is set in South Africa and just so unique compared to a lot of contemporary books that I typically pick up.

This story was amazing. Better than I thought it would be actually. And I can't wait to read it with others four then to feel the way I did

I really enjoyed this book, The narrative is through 15-year-old Amandla's POV as she finds family secrets that rock her world. Malla Nunn does such a beautiful job of using simple narration to delve into deep emotions and create multi-faceted characters that you will love and will break your heart. Highly recommend.

Yes, absolutely. Let's take a look at racism, bigotry, and living in poverty. Let's include some romance (more than one), some wonderful characters, and a really interesting setting. Yes. 100 percent love this book. It is poignant, it is important, and it's so, so good.

The main character Amandla acts fierce, and she has to growing up in a poor area called Sugar Town. Her mother has memory and other issues, good days and bad. Amandla wants to know how her mother gets their money, so follows her one day and discovers a family she knew nothing about. Unfortunately, her grandfather is a racist, doesn't want a mixed-race girl around, nor his daughter. The grandmother on the other hand, while being very ill does want them around. The story is about how these two come to a resolution, and how Amandla learns her mother’s story.

While I enjoyed Amandla’s fierceness, I wished more of what she said in her head turned into actual words. I didn’t like how much more was inside her instead of in the outside world. Nonetheless the story was decent, a good read.

A book that was equal parts heartwarming and heartbreaking. Definitely not for the faint of heart, but if you can handle the tough subject matter, a beautiful read overall.

I love the fierce, powerful characters in this book. They are all extremely lovable and I found the story to be extremely impactful. I felt that this discussed such important issues and family dynamics which less people should fear discussing. I would certainly recommend this.

Amandla is a fifteen-year-old girl in South Africa. Her mother has visions of the future that don’t often come true. She also has missing memories from her past, including the identity of Amandla’s father. Amandla and her mother stand out, not just because of her mother’s strange visions, but because her mother is white and she is half-Black. When Amandla finds a paper with an address in her mother’s purse, she decides to go there to learn more about her mother’s past. She discovers deeper family secrets than she could have predicted.

Race was an important issue in this book. There is a history of race tensions in South Africa which was depicted in this novel. Amandla had to deal with that first hand, since she had a different appearance from her mother.

There were class prejudices that went along with the race prejudice. The white people were considered “good” and upper class, while the Black people were “bad” or dangerous and lower class. However, one of Amandla’s white relatives was arguably one of the worst characters in the book and treated her mother horribly. Money, power, and skin colour don’t determine if a person is good or bad.

Sugar Town Queens is an eye opening young adult novel.

Thank you G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I totally fell in love with this book. Part slice of life, part family drama, part mystery, I just went with it every single step of the way.

Malla Nunn's writing is just absolutely masterful here. There is a youthful energy that runs through it from beginning to end, but at the same time it never feels super young or childish. She has a way of tapping right into Amandla's mind and painting a clear picture of the city, the people, and the situations she finds herself in.

Every character is so clearly and thoroughly drawn, and I felt myself getting more and more invested in each of them and their journey the more I read. Her friends, Lil Bit and Goodness, were such a delight to read about and I felt like each of these Sugar Town queens depicted a different possible path a person could take in the city.

The family drama and mystery brings up topics like grief, memory, regret, race/colorism, and the way the past affects who we become. Each issue is handled with such grace and was just dealt so beautifully.

There is a bit of insta-love that I wasn't super invested in, but it never once interfered with my enjoyment of the rest of the book.

Overall? A really wonderful book and a beautiful introduction for me to Malla Nunn's writing.

I really enjoyed the first half of this book it was powerful and super engaging; I felt as though the second half dragged just a bit but still it didn't take away from the story.

Set in Sugar Town, South Africa, Amandla is a girl who just wants answers, respect, and freedom. One thing she seems she can’t put her finger on is her mother, Annalisa, who has visions of her father. Most recently, a vision came on her 15th birthday which Amandla is like, “Girl, come on?!!”
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Because Amandla has wonderful friends, they start becoming sleuths about her mother and results in her learning the truth of her mother’s heritage. This leads into a whirlwind of emotions, eradicating bigots, and becoming even more resilient before.
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This story took me out of my reading block and touches on topics such as racial issues, colorism, and classism. Please believe there are some twists and you’ll love Mrs. Mashanini!

Amandla lives in Sugar Town, a township in South Africa. She has a white mother and a Black father (who she’s never met), and she gets made fun of for not being “Black enough” or “white enough,” but she isn’t ashamed of who she is. Amandla is determined to learn more about her father and where she came from, so she sets out on a journey of uncovering family secrets. She has the best support system (her friends Lil Bit and Goodness) who help her every step of the way.

Likes
▪️stunning cover
▪️Amandla was a strong female lead
▪️family drama and secrets

Dislikes
▪️slow-paced at times

Once Amandla uncovers her family secrets, it becomes gut-wrenching. She stands up for what she believes and isn’t willing to back down — which I loved. Amandla was such a great character! Sugar Town Queens is an emotional story of trauma and redemption, with a beautiful cast of backup characters.

This was exactly the feel-good book I was craving. I loved the characters, the writing, and the story!

Sugar Town Queens by Malla Nunn; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 256 pages ($17.99) Ages 14 and up. (Aug. 3 publication)

The persistent racism and stark economic inequalities of post-Mandela South Africa offer a colorful and illuminating political backdrop to this intriguing, beautifully written novel by Malla Nunn, a native of Swaziland whose Young Adult debut, “When the Ground is Hard,” won the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Nunn also wrote two murder mysteries for adults, "A Beautiful Place to Die" and "Let the Dead Lie" and this novel is essentially a mystery as well. 15-year-old Amandla Harden lives with her white mother, Annalisa, in the rough South African township of Sugar Town, but has no idea who her mother's family is, how they ended up living in a one-room shack ("rocks and old tires hold down the flat tin roof ") in a township and why Annalisa suffers periodic mental breakdowns and has huge gaps in her memory, including who Amandla's Black father was and why he abandoned them.

As the novel opens, Annalisa is ordering Amandla to wear a blue sheet to school, rather than the mandatory uniform, as a magical way to bring her father back to them. She also insists on a new look for her daughter rather than her usual single French braid: "Today she pulls the metal teeth of an Afro pick through my springy curls to make a bumping 'fro that casts a shadow onto the kitchen table. It is huge. An alien spacecraft could crash-land on the surface of it and sustain no damage. Beyonce rocking a Foxxy Cleopatra wig has nothing on me."


When Annalisa returns from the bus ride to Durban on Amandla's birthday in a distraught state and collapses into bed, Amanda searches her purse and finds a large amount of cash along with a note with an appointment time and place and decides to investigate.

Through Amandla's voice, Nunn paints a vivid picture of poverty in the township (Annalisa and Amandla subsist on a spartan diet), of the meth heads and criminals, of the danger to girls and women who lack male protection, of the very fragile safety net that protects Annalisa and Amandla from an even more dire situation than their one-room shack. She also offers a wonderful cast of characters in the township community including kindly neighbor Mrs. M; Amandla's school friends L'il Bit, daughter of a disgraced cleric, and Goodness, a soccer phenom, and Goodness' brother Lewis, whose father runs a prosperous construction business. Amandla, who refers to herself as "a genetic mutt" for her mixed-race status, faces prejudice from both Black and white including someone who hurls the "kaffir" slur at her.

The vivid portrait of township life and Zulu traditions and the warm supportive community that rallies around Amandla and her mother are the real focus of the novel.

This one was a pleasant surprise! This book takes the concept of three generations of women in a family and turns it on its head by introducing race issues, class issues and overall familial strife.

It showcases that the bonds that tie us, whether by blood or chosen, can be super strong. It highlights the importance of having a close circle that you can trust to have your back no matter what. It also sprinkles in a bit of teenage romance, which I love!

It was so interesting to learn about the culture in South Africa, the different class systems and how vastly different conditions can be, even mere miles apart.

I highly recommend this one to anyone who likes YA, stories about family and who wants to learn more about South African culture.

This heartfelt Coming of Age YA novel is one you’ll seep close to your heart for a long time. It’s a story that centers around Amandla and the mystery of her mom, and Amandla father (who hasn’t been in the picture). After finding a phone number, she along with her best friends embark on a journey to find answers, and Amandla find out more than she ever would have imagined.

This story about courage, strength, family, and community will tug at your heartstrings, the writing is immersive, and captivating. The way we are introduced to each character, giving each individual their back story and important role they each played, came around full circle at the end. I appreciated that as a reader I had each piece of the puzzle needed to really take in what transpired page after page.

Truly a memorable novel, and I highly recommend it.

Content warnings: racism, racist slurs, homophobia, statutory rape, mental illness, forced medical procedures, forced institutionalization, death, grief, violence, gun violence, sexual harassment, drugs and alchohol

Sugar Town Queens is a beautiful, heartbreaking, coming of age story. We follow Amandla who is known in her township for having a crazy mother. Yet Amandla doesn't know much of her past, besides the fact that her father was Zulu nor does she know what has caused her mother to become the part of a person she is now. In this beautiful story Amandla learns about her past as well as the pasts of the people around her.

This story is hauntingly beautiful. The characters are all amazing and complex. Amandla has such complex emotions that are explored through her forced caretaking of her mother, the knowledge that she gains about her past and her family, and the way she is treated in the township. The emotions that she displays are so raw and well written. Everything in the story is handled in a very beautiful and sensitive way.

Lil Bit and Goodness are Amandla's two closest friends. They are so incredibly different and even though they are side characters they are still complex and have their own deep and meaningful storylines and backgrounds. The relationship that we start to see budding between these two is so cute and was so lovely to see. Sam is a character that brings in much different perspective for Amandla that adds a lot of interest. Even the relationship between Amandla and Amanda, though short, has so much complexity in it and really makes it one of the most realistic familial relationship I've read about in a long time.

The relationships in the book are all so complex and well done. The relationship between Amandla and her mother is so complicated but such as real thing to read about. The friendships that were created before the book are well done and the friendships created are also well done. They are so fun and heartwarming to read about. Even with the amount of hard topics that are covered in the books the friendships between these teenagers are able to bring a much needed light note to the story and bring about moments of happiness.

There is a lot of grief explored in this book. It is definitely not a light read but it was just beautifully done and so important.