Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm cover art

Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm

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Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm

By: Laura Warrell
Narrated by: Nicole Lewis
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Love is messy. Love can make us feel alive. It can also bring us down. Sometimes we look for it in all the wrong places. This is a novel about longing, desire and dreams; about passion and risk and all the places in between.

Maggie is pregnant with Circus Palmer's child. This may be her last chance, but she craves her freedom.

Pia is Circus's ex-wife, still in love with the fantasy of the man who conjured jazz tunes for her into the night, but who left many years before.

Koko, Circus's daughter, is lost in the maelstrom of teenage years, the confusion of awakening desire and yearning for the father she barely knows.

Peach is a barmaid who just wants someone to see the person she is inside.

Odessa is on the run from a mistake that can't be undone.

And then there's Circus, Circus Palmer, a jazz trumpeter whose moment of glory is fading. Selfish, damaged, scared, perhaps the only person Circus is fooling is himself.

Delivered in a lush orchestration of diverse female voices, Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm is a provocative and gripping novel about the desire to be loved, and the need to belong.

©2023 Laura Warrell (P)2023 Penguin Audio African American Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

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Critic reviews

"An exceptional debut... This story is an example of how love, in all of its polyrhythms, can sometimes sound like song, and other times like noise. And this book is an example of how a great story can become a bass drum, kicking and thumping in your belly far after it's over. A modern masterpiece." (Jason Reynolds, author of Look Both Ways)

"Soulful... Elegant, unexpected and wrenching as the "fierce" sounds that emerge from Circus's trumpet... Unforgettable." (New York Times Book Review)

"[An] emerging literary superstar...This sensual and sensuous debut is a kaleidoscopic character study, a polyphonic riff on the modern-day Casanova from the perspectives of the myriad women in his wake." (Oprah Daily)
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Great narrator. Writing was disjointed in that the excessive shifts in character perspective always had the same voice. The story felt directionless in any important sense, more of an “and then this happened…and then that happened…” type of book. I didn’t get to care about any of the main characters and the ending was an ending for a character other than who I thought was the main protagonist. Coming off the back of ‘Butter, (an excellent read) and being a big jazz fan this felt superficial and devoid of life learning for me. Sorry 😬

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