Sweetness in the Skin by Ishi Robinson

 

About

A Jamaican girl is determined to bake her way out of her dysfunctional family and into the opportunity of a lifetime.

Pumkin Patterson is a thirteen-year-old girl living in a tiny two-room house in Kingston, Jamaica with her grandmother (who wants to improve the family’s social standing); her aunt Sophie (who dreams of a new life in Paris for her and Pumkin); and her mother Paulette (who’s rarely home). When Sophie is offered the chance to move to France for work, she seizes the opportunity and promises to send for her niece in one year’s time. All Pumkin has to do is pass her French entrance exam so she can attend school there. But when Pumkin’s grandmother dies, she’s left alone with her volatile mother, and as soon as her estranged father turns up—as lazy and conniving as ever—the household’s fortunes take a turn for the worse.

Pumkin must somehow find a way to raise the money for her French exam. In a moment of ingenuity she turns her passion for baking into a true business. Making batches of sweet potato pudding, coconut drops and chocolate cakes, Pumkin develops a booming trade—but when her school and her mother find out what she’s up to, everything she’s worked so hard for may slip through her fingers.

My Thoughts

One word.

Brilliant.

I enjoyed this novel from start to finish. In Sweetness in the Skin we meet teenager, Akisha Patterson aka Pumkin. She was a girl with a dream to live in France which was born out of her aunt Sophie's love for everything French. But Pumkin's less than ideal life in Jamaica with an abusive mother, absentee father makes that dream almost impossible. That is until aunt Sophie gets an opportunity to work in France.

Determined to get to her aunt, Pumkin was prepared to fight against the odds to fulfill her dream. There were sad and emotional moments in the novel but there were equally joyous ones as well. I really enjoyed the story and highly recommend this book. One of my best reads for 2025 so far.