Sugar, Baby - by Celine Saintclare (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

From a dazzling new voice, a bold, intoxicating novel that shows "the grit alongside the glamor" (Vogue) of high-paid sex work in the age of the internet.

Sugar, Baby follows Agnes, a mixed-race 21-year-old whose life seems to be heading nowhere. Still living at home, she works as a cleaner and spends all her money in clubs on the weekends searching for distractions from her mundane life. That is until she meets Emily, daughter of one of her cleaning clients, who lives in London and works as a model . . . and a sugar baby, dating rich older men for money.

Emily's life is the escape Agnes has been longing for-extravagant tasting menus, champagne on tap, glamorous hotels with unlimited room service, designer gifts from dates who call her beautiful. But this new lifestyle is the last straw for her religious mother Constance.

Kicked out of her family home, Agnes moves in with Emily and the other sugar babies in their fancy London flat and is drawn deeper and deeper into their world. But these women come from money: they possess a safety net Agnes does not. And as she is thrown from one precarious relationship to the next-a married man who wants to show off the glamourous, exotic girl on his arm; a Russian billionaire's wife who makes Agnes central to a sex party in Miami-she finds herself searching for fulfillment just as desperately as she was before.

A compelling journey of self-discovery that offers sharp commentary on race, beauty, and class, Sugar, Baby is an electric, original, spellbinding novel that will keep readers turning the pages until the very end.

Review Quotes

"Sugar, Baby depicts the glittering world of the young women who make a kind of living by showing up at clubs and restaurants to burnish their associations with youth and beauty. Are these women being taken advantage of-or are they on the ride of their lives? This personable novel . . . doesn't come down on one side of the equation. Instead, it shows the grit alongside the glamor, and crafts a very believable story that feels like a document of the moment, when image is a valuable and fleeting currency." --Vogue

"An elegant coming-of-age tale . . . Saintclare's language is easy to soak in, even as her nuanced touch pokes and prods and asks-no, demands-real consideration of the reader." --Elle

"Saintclare uses the aesthetics of key bumps and designer handbags to poke at class, sex, labor and power." --NPR.org

"This . . . bold and sexy portrayal of a high-paid sex work in the age of the internet is a must-read with detailed commentary on societal power dynamics in the industry." --Vice TV

"To describe Sugar, Baby as a book ahead of its time feels almost unfairly reductive, considering how smart and thought-provoking a narrative Saintclare has crafted . . . Touching on topics ranging from sex work to race and privilege, Sugar, Baby is entrancing from start to finish." --Shondaland

"Celine Saintclare's captivating debut, Sugar, Baby, is, on its surface, about the limitless power of beauty, but underneath that narrative lurks a second, darker one, in which Saintclare shows us in heartbreaking detail that there are indeed limits to what that power can buy. Sugar, Baby is an elegantly crafted bait-and-switch, where a story about the ease and glamour of sex work cracks open to reveal a deeper and more delicious secret: that the true sweetness of life lies not in the comfort of being kept, but in the autonomy we are able to maintain for ourselves. And the beauty of that kind of living-hand-made and hard-won-is priceless." --Destiny O. Birdsong, author of NOBODY'S MAGIC

"A witty, propulsive and intimate examination of sexual commerce, the painful pleasures of self-objectification, and the liberatory power of art-making featuring a tenderhearted heroine I never stopped caring about. Sugar, Baby is everything." --Chantal V. Johnson, author of POST-TRAUMATIC

"This is a steamy and spellbinding story that will leave you hot under the collar, but also provide a sense of hopefulness regarding our own autonomy over this world.... Sexiness sells, but the author's sensitive portrayal of sexuality is what makes this book stand out." --Debutiful's "Best Debut Books of 2024"

About the Author