I was very excited to read this debut YA novel by Carly Nugent, who won the Readings Children’s Book Prize in 2019 for her middle-grade novel The Peacock Detectives. Sugar is for a much older readership and focuses on a 16-year-old girl, Persephone, and her experience of living with diabetes, while struggling with grief and a sense of emptiness. She was diagnosed with diabetes not long after her father died in a car accident, and grief for her father’s death is tied up in her belief that she deserves diabetes as punishment for her treatment of him. She lives in a small town with her mother and her mother’s best friend and son, who have left an abusive household, and this unusual family provides an important dynamic in the story. When Persephone finds a dead girl in the woods, she becomes obsessed with why the girl died and feels a connection with her. As well as Persephone, there are a number of beautifully drawn secondary characters, including two teenage boys, the best friend of the dead girl, and Persephone’s family.

Notated with regular updates of Persephone’s sugar levels, the reader is intimately exposed to the lived experience of her daily life and the challenges of living with diabetes. It also shows the pain of grief and how it affects people differently, with many characters in the novel in emotional pain.

Beautifully written, heartfelt and with a forward momentum that keeps you turning thepage, this novel about loss, guilt and anger is ultimately hopeful and an absolute triumph.There are instances of swearing, smoking, drinking and a brief sexual encounter, so it’sbest suited to readers aged 14 and up.

Angela Crocombe is a senior buyer at Readings.