4.5 stars

I really enjoyed this story, and I loved how a family’s loss and secret history had a positive spin and brought them closer together.

After the loss of their mother, Byron and Benny were struggling to navigate their way around one another. Their once-close relationship was a thing of the past, and the impending funeral only proved to make matters more unbearable for them. But when their mother’s lawyer stepped in to show them a video she recorded prior to her death, the estranged siblings temporarily set their differences aside to feed their curiosity.

The secrets revealed by Eleanor Bennett spanned across a lifetime, and now that her children knew the truth behind their family’s history, would they embrace these new revelations or feel even more betrayed and lost?

This truly was an incredible story — one of love, survival, and preserving traditions — but I think above all, it showed the strength of a woman who lost everything only to rebuild her entire life while keeping her true identity a secret. The one part of Eleanor’s past that she held onto (besides the love of her life) was the tradition of making the black cake and I love how that was incorporated into the story.

Some parts of this book dragged on a bit, so it took me longer to finish than I expected, but overall, I really enjoyed and highly recommend it!

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4490508283

This book is written in a way that keeps the reader off balance. It moves from one story in the prologue to another in the body to yet another, which may or may not be related to the first stories in some way? There are a lot of secrets to hold the reader's interest if you like this kind of reading experience. I don't. DNF at 21%.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Black Cake starts with the death of Eleanor Bennett. Her estranged kids, Benny and Byron, reunite at her funeral and their lawyer says that their mother has left them a recording to listen to together. As Eleanor’s adult children listen to the recording, they are shocked to learn the details of their mother’s history growing up in an unnamed Caribbean island. As Eleanor’s story is revealed, both Byron and Benny learn to come to terms with their parents’ history and maybe even find a way to bridge the distance that had grown between them through the years.

I really enjoyed the overall story. I learned a few new things about Caribbean history. I think the author tried to add too many social issues to this one and some of them just got buried in all the other topics such as racism, abuse, neglect, and homophobia. I did like the unifying thread of the black cake, since food often holds a lot of culture and history for people and communities. The ending was a satisfying wrap up of the many storylines that merged together.

Thank you to @NetGalley for this advance reader's copy. This novel will be released on 2/1/2022

This review can also be found at Goodreads and on IG @maria.needs.to.read

This cover immediately caught my attention. I admire the colors and artistry so much. After reading the book, I appreciate the design of the cover even more. The layers of the illustration reflect the complexities of identity and history present in the story.

The plot unfolds in multiple timelines with short (but impactful) chapters. Every line is meaningful. Even the chapter titles pack a punch.

There's a thread of mystery running through the otherwise character-driven story, as past events are revealed and explained. The themes focus on family relationships and cultural identity. It's a great choice for fans of family dramas and stories with strong character development.

What does it say about a book when the worst criticism you can give is that there is no recipe included for the wonderful black cake that features so prominently throughout the book? Benny and Byron are shocked to learn that their mother has held a secret (actually several) for almost her entire life. After she dies, the secrets are revealed through an emotional audio recording. Between this current timeline and flashbacks to previous points in their mother's history, the reader is drawn in to the cultures of the Caribbean Islands, England, and then California. Each placing different expectations on the various characters. I loved the writing! I loved the character development. I struggled off and on with the bouncing around in timelines but that was a minor annoyance when reading such a beautiful book!

This was a wonderful debut, and I look forward to reading Charmaine Wilkerson’s future work!

Overall, I liked this book. It started out really strong and I loved the “then” portion of the story. It serves as a great reminder that you never know what the people you encounter in life have experienced. Everyone has their own personal stories, struggles, secrets, that we could never fully comprehend.

I feel like as the book went on and flashed more between “then” and “now,” there was a lot of jumping. I think the “then” story progressed smoothly, but present-day was almost throwing in random chapters that didn’t add to the overall story, and didn’t really fit properly. Stand-alone, they were good and covered important social justice issues, but since they didn’t fit within this story, they were rushed and didn’t hold the weight they could have. I also didn’t find the children all that likeable… BUT a lot of the book focuses on the story told by their mother, and that to me makes it well worth reading.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

I will post my review to Goodreads and to Instagram the Saturday before publication day, and will post a review to Amazon once it allows me to!

The Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson is phenomenal. This beautifully written book is so rich, loaded with culture and history. The gorgeous descriptions in this novel allowed me to travel the world as the tale unfolded. It traveled across oceans from the Caribbean to Great Britain and on to America. A story filled with faith, hope, enduring love, loss, great pain, sadness, and redemption. It is full of mystery and secrets. It touches on a myriad of tough issues; gambling, racism, rape, adoption, and so many more. Charmaine Wilkerson’s captivating storytelling had me absolutely engrossed. It drew me in, and I could not stop reading. This multi-generational tale is told in two timelines. One concentrates on the life of Covey, who becomes Eleanor Bennett. The other focuses on her children after her death. I became completely invested in the lives of Covey, Gibbs, Bunny, Byron, Benny, and Marble. Intricately, the story was woven through time. I cannot find words worthy enough to express how this book affected me. It brought me to tears, also made me smile. The story was believable, though still unfathomable. It is a masterpiece filled with complex characters that were so perfectly tied together. I know it will be one of my favorite reads this year. I would rate this debut novel much higher than 5 stars if it were possible.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, and the talented author, Charmaine Wilkerson, for my complimentary e-copy ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

4.5 stars, rounded up, for this beautiful generational family saga!

I absolutely loved reading about Eleanor Douglas’ past, the secrets revealed to her children after her passing. While there were many characters to keep up with, the way their stories wove together made me want to keep reading.

Thank you to Random House Publishing - Ballantine and NetGalley for the advanced copy to review. This book comes out February 1, 2022.

In Black Cake, by Charmaine Wilkerson, the matriarch of the family has died leaving her children a long video explaining how her life has been peppered with unspeakable drama, some so bad that she never shared with her beloved husband. New information is shared in a way that twists and turns what we have been led to believe and ties in the importance of the black cake to the family. As the story unfolds, the reader sees how the ghosts of the past continue to influence the future. Thank you, NetGalley and Random House, Ballantine, for providing me with an ARC ebook in exchange for my honest review.

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel Black Cake is one of those books where a key component of what makes the story work is the “journey of discovery” where important elements of the characters’ pasts are revealed slowly and gradually overthe course of the entire narrative. Because of this, it’s best to go into this one knowing as little as possible outside of the main characters and basic premise.

To that point, the story revolves around estranged siblings Bryon and Benny, who are forced to reunite after their mother Eleanor Bennett dies and leaves behind an inheritance consisting of a traditional Caribbean black cake and a voice recording — along with strict instructions that they must put aside their differences and come together to share the cake as well as listen to the recording. The story that their mother shares with them is a harrowing one filled with heartbreak and loss, but also love, courage, and resilience. Will hearing their mother’s story and understanding her past mend the siblings’ once close relationship or drive them further apart?

I definitely enjoyed this well-written debut, though in all honesty, there were times when I really wasn’t sure where the story was going. In addition to a lot of jumping around in terms of timelines and plot points, the way some of the characters were introduced took a bit too long at times, to the point that it felt like the story was meandering off course — but just when you start to wonder what the purpose of all this long discourse is, Wilkerson would suddenly veer the story back into relevance, and then, the previous sections would start to make a little more sense. In terms of the characters — while I didn’t feel much of an emotional connection to them, I liked all of them well enough to want to root for them and also care about what happens to them.

Overall, this was a solid debut and definitely a worthwhile read. It did take a little bit of patience at times though due to certain parts of the story taking awhile to get to the point, but I feel that the effort does pay off in the end.

Received ARC from Ballantine Books via NetGalley

Wow. This book was incredible. I love a good family drama to begin with, but this book was really unique in its plotline and execution. I don't think there's a single thing I would change - this book was perfect. It was engaging, interesting, hard to put down, moving, heartbreaking, joyous, and beautiful.

I loved the writing, the way the story was told, the way the reader was fed little snippets at a time to bring certain aspects of the story together. I loved how the black cake tied the whole story together and was weaved throughout. It was so perfectly and beautifully said in the author's note how some recipes carry an emotional weight, and that was especially true of the black cake in this story. It was almost its own character.

I loved all the characters in this book - they were all real, flawed, beautiful people who lived through hardships and triumphs. Their relationships changed and fluctuated throughout their lives, as relationships are apt to do - and the relationships in this book were perfectly written in a very natural and believable way.

This book includes mystery, intrigue, all different types of relationships, and a multitude of sensitive topics, which are all handled with care. This book is really the complete package.

I imagine this book will appeal to all different types of readers. I will be recommending it to everyone!

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine books for the e-arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Oh my gosh I LOVED this. The writing was magical, to I felt like I learned so much about Benny and Byron and their history. I loved learning about their story, family history, and their culture.

I really liked the beginning of the book. Eleanor has just passed away and she left an 8-hour recording with her telling a story for her son and her estranged daughter to listen together. And her story is fascinating. The author transports us to an island in the Cariibbean, where we meet Covey, a girl with a passion for the open waters. After her mum leaves, her life starts crumbling down in ways she (and the reader) doesn't expect.

We follow the story that Eleanor is telling alongside Byron and Benny, and sometimes we get little pieces of them interspersed with Eleanor's narrative. And that's where the book started loosing me. In the current days sections, it seemed the author wanted to hit a lot of points (specially social commentary) and she kept on adding more and more along with new PoVs. I coudn't connect with any of the current day timeline characters because too much was been thrown in this timeline without going deeper; and this type of family saga needs the reader to care about its character for it to work. All of the topic points that the author brought to the forefront ended up diluting the main narrative, even though I really liked the past day story.

One of the things that I'm always concerned it might happen in a dual time perspective is that I'm going to care only about one of them. And that's excatly what happened here; I just wish the current day story was as strong as the past day one.

Thank you Netgalley, author, and publisher for the ARC.

3.5 stars

I very much enjoyed reading this book but I'm surprised I didn't connect with it on any type of emotional level. Don't get me wrong, there are some good moments, but I was left wanting just a tad more from the reading experience. I do like how the author incorporated so many relevant issues into the story and that's why I'd recommend it to other readers.

After the death of their mother, estranged siblings, Byron and Benny, meet up with her lawyer. They are given a traditional Caribbean black cake with instructions to share it when the time is right. Their mother, Eleanor Bennett, also left them a voice recording in which she tells the heartbreaking tale of a young female swimmer. Hmm... what exactly was going through Eleanor's mind before she passed away?

I had a general hunch of the direction of the storyline but it still was interesting to watch it unfold with a few surprises along the way. The story goes back and forth between the lives of the characters in the present as well as what happened on the island so many years ago. The writing style in how the author told the story had some originality. Things really come together in the second half and I was impressed the story had much more substance than a typical family drama.

Bottom line, each reader has the potential to take away something different from the story and the characters. And that's what makes this book worthy of a look.

Byron and his sister Benny are about to hear the recording of their mother’s will and thoughts. They are the adult children of Eleanor Bennett. These siblings have been estranged from each other but are now gathered in the family home in California. They are barely able to occupy the same place, let alone process the revelations from their mother. Eleanor has also left them the black cake (from a traditional recipe), to be shared when the time is right – they will know.

This is a great debut novel from an author that takes us back in time to Eleanor’s early life which reveals an inheritance of secrets, strengths, decisions and survival which may just enable the siblings to rise above what they think they know.

The novel takes place mostly in the Caribbean, England and California in the span of Eleanor’s life where she encounters misogyny, family conflict, child abandonment, racism, abuse, and environmental issues. Can all this be in one novel without weighing down a narrative? Yes, the engaging stories, characters and settings propel the reader to discover what lies ahead for Eleanor and now her children. Read the book now and visualize the movie…..it will happen! Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this title.

3.5 stars

I love a good family drama book. This one has it. The novel starts with estranged siblings having to navigate the death of their mother, a very hard thing to do when you haven’t spoken to each other in years.

The coldness between the siblings begins to melt as they come to terms with their family’s past that is revealed after their mother’s dying confessions. Throughout the revelations, a family tradition of Black Cake is woven through the story. It is a way of connecting the family to their Caribbean roots.

The author writes vividly about the locations and people in the book. Some of it is set in the Caribbean, some in Europe, some in North America. Each place is written in a compelling way. In the Author’s Note, Wilkerson shares the sources and inspiration that helped bring this work to life.

Readers of fiction who enjoy family dynamics or Caribbean culture will enjoy this book.

I was sent an electronic copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley.

This was a wonderful debut about a family and their secrets. When Eleanor passes away, she leaves her children a recording of what her life was like before. As her son and daughter listen they are realizing there was so much more to their mother that they knew! I enjoyed the different time lines and the multiple points of views. I received an advanced readers copy and all opinions are my own.

Black Cake is the debut novel from Charmaine Wilkerson and it was one I found myself drawn to given the different way in which it was written and it's very different from what I typically read.

Siblings Benny and Byron are brought together by the passing of their mother and her one last wish is for them to listen to a recording and to eat the Black Cake she has left for them at the right time. Benny and Byron were close as children, but a rift has left them separated by both miles and emotions for years.

Throughout the book, we're taken on a journey of how the siblings mother, Eleanor, made her way from the Caribbean to the United States and how her life unfolded throughout. There are secrets the siblings never knew and there are lessons to be learned as they take this final journey set out by their mother.

While there was a lot going on in this book, I found the way the story was told to be very interesting and different from the books I normally find myself reading. For me, I liked that departure and I think it added to the richness (no pun intended!) of the story. Well done by Ms. Wilkerson.

**I voluntarily read an early copy of this title courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review**

This book was deeply moving. At first, I wasn't sure the direction it would go in; the writing was initially awkward and I fumbled through the first few chapters. But as it started to pick up steam, I couldn't put it down. My fingers were itching to continue reading- I HAD to know how the story ended.

Black Cake was a heavy read- if you're looking for something light-hearted and fun, this is NOT it. But it's a book that stays with you. Every emotion- fear, love, hate, anger, respect- jumped off the page and was woven intricately with the words that you could physically feel it. The love of Ellie Bennett for her kids, her husband Bert, her past- it was all encompassing.

This was a great first outing for Charmaine Wilkerson- I would have never guessed she was a debut author. But the way she addressed current events from both a historical perspective as well as a modern one is something many authors cannot do. The two themes, survival and endurance, were weaved into every chapter; it looked at what one is willing to do to survive while also showing through food (i.e. Black Cake) how not just cultures, but PEOPLE can continue to endure throughout time.

Beautifully written, I recommend this book to everyone to read.

This debut novel was intriguing and well written. The author is quite the storyteller and this family drama and its characters will remain with me for some time.
I look forward to Ms. Wilkerson's next book.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC ebook.