Sweet Like Sugar Cane
The Prequel to Neither Out Far Nor In Deep—Gwen’s Story
Leah T. Williams
Publisher: Self-published
Publication date: June 1, 2025
Genre: Young Adult
Rating:
Before she became the mother struggling to understand her American-born son in Neither Out Far Nor In Deep, Gwendolyn Richards was just a girl in St. Kitts trying to figure out who she was.
She had her best friend Sharon, her father’s quiet wisdom, her mother’s firm and loving hands, and Lenwell Turnbull whose eyes found hers across every school assembly. Life moved to the rhythm of sugar cane fields, market mornings, and the island’s radio reading out the names of the dead.Then everything changed.
In one season, Gwen will discover the electricity of first love and learn that some things cannot be rushed, like yam vines, like grief, like growing up. She will face heartbreak she never saw coming and changes that will alter her world forever.
Sweet Like Sugar Cane is a lyrical, tender coming of age story set against the vivid backdrop of Caribbean island life. It is a story about the sweetness of first love, the bitterness of loss, and the bittersweet reality of becoming someone new.
Perfect for readers who love Jamaica Kincaid, Edwidge Danticat, and stories about Black girls finding their strength in the most difficult seasons of their lives.
My thoughts…
This book weaves the tale of a young girl as she falls in love, and loses those she cares for the most.
The story is written almost like poetry. There’s a calmness to the writing that really transports you in the island life mindset. I honestly don’t know how to explain it. I listened to the audiobook and it was almost like I could feel the warm humid breeze, and hear the sugarcanes sway in the wind as the narrator told the story.
However, despite the beautiful storytelling, the book ultimately felt incomplete. Something was missing, perhaps because even though this is a prequel to Neither Out Far Nor In Deep, it was written years after the original story. Gwen was simply not given enough time to develop. My main takeaway was simply a teenager whose story moved very quickly from a brief infatuation to major life changes right before she had to move away.
On the positive side, I loved the family dynamics. Her mother and father had very different ways of interacting with Gwen and handling her interest in boys. I laughed out loud when the boy showed up at her house and her mother answered the door without holding back. I truly wish we got more of her family life and the core of who she was in St. Kitts without Lenwell.
Yet, one thing cannot be denied about this story. It’s real. It’s raw. It’s authentic. While I wish for more of just Gwen and her family, I was once a young teenage girl, infatuated with a boy. I’m sure if my story was written in a book, there would be a reviewer out there saying that I was too focused on the boy and needed more personal substance. So, taking that part out of the equation, the author did a really good job. She captured the true essence of adolescence while making the reader feel like they were right there in St. Kitts.
