Black Cake - by Charmaine Wilkerson

Bought this as a gift to my daughter. She loved it!

I loved the storyline

Phenomenal book! Had me hooked from start to finish! So well written-beautiful! Highly recommend this one!

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine Books & NetGalley for a digital advance reader's copy. All comments and opinions are my own. This debut was definitely in the "amazing" category and worth all of its 5 stars! It's a story of family, identity, and tradition, told from the points of view of several of the characters. The multiple voices narrating the characters' struggles, triumphs, and histories assist in bridging one generation to the next. As Ballentine Books' Executive Editor Hilary Teeman says, this is "a saga about a mother’s secrets, a family’s uncertain future, and the legacy of what we inherit through our recipes, our pasts, and often our untold stories." The first characters we meet are brother and sister Byron and Benny in current day, as they listen to the recording their recently deceased mother left for them, narrating the previously unknown story of her life. The author adds characters and situations, locations and various historical periods a little at a time in each of the short and quick moving chapters, as one might add recipe ingredients which will come together in a delicious story to feast upon. Sorry, I couldn't resist the food allusions. I really liked the way the characters discover their connections to each other as we learn of their secrets and how the novel all comes together to illustrate the concepts of home and family, longing, loss, second chances, and love. One of the most important themes that comes up repeatedly is risk, and several characters demonstrate their determination to take a specific risk in order to survive. Author Wilkerson explains that "Most of the characters in this novel are people who do not quite fit into the boxes that others expect of them. They struggle against stereotypes and the gulf between their interests and ambitions and the lives which other people expect them to lead, based on gender, culture, or class. Their difficulties are both universal and specific to the times and places in which they live." Skillfully plotted and beautifully written, I couldn't stop thinking about this deliciously multi-layered story. I highly recommend it.