"best few quid you’ll spend on your kindle this month"

4.0 out of 5 stars An incredible debut!, 2 Feb 2013

By 

David Fenn (UK) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Sugar Cane (Kindle Edition)

I’d only got a few pages in to this book when I realised I liked what I was reading and had discovered an author of some significant talent.
A girl’s father dies and leaves her with a mysterious apology and half a confession; so she travels to his homeland of Mauritius only to discover a very dark and troubled past indeed.
Sounds formulaic, doesn’t it – however this story is anything but. This is in fact a rattling good read and a superb piece of work. After an intriguing start, the pace builds steadily throughout and although the switch to first person immediate for the final section is perhaps too much of a gear change, I can see why the author did it.
It does work; I’m just not a fan of that tense.
Sugar Cane is not my usual reading genre, but I was absolutely drawn in by the plot and realistic characters. That’s the cornerstone of Emma Fry’s writing; characters – the realistic and down to earth nature of our protagonist and the dialogue throughout is superb, and I’d honestly go as far as to say that her dialogue is the best I have read from a new writer in a very, very long time. With colloquialisms, accent, French and a bit of Creole, it is totally believable and engaging beyond belief for a first novel. Only Steve King can do dialogue better than this!
Regardless of what you usually read – this will be the best few quid you’ll spend on your kindle this month – and I don’t half look forward to more work from a lady who is I am sure going to be quite a name in the writing world.