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Sweetness in the Skin

Discover the uplifting, coming of age novel that will capture your heart in 2025

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Sweetness in the Skin

By: Ishi Robinson
Narrated by: Deja Bowens
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.


SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 OCM BOCAS PRIZE FOR CARIBBEAN LITERATURE

Pumkin Patterson dreams of a life beyond her Jamaican hometown. But what we dream of and where we belong aren’t always the same thing…

Eleven-year-old Pumpin knows a few things:

That her mother has never loved her
That Aunt Sophie does
That baking makes everything better
And France is a long way from her Jamaican home

What Pumkin doesn’t know is:

What will happen when Aunt Sophie leaves for France
How far a mother can go to hurt a daughter
Why a secret can rot a family
That her cakes might just help save her life

Whatever happens, Pumkin knows she needs someone to love her.

But she just doesn’t know who . . .
Praise for Sweetness in the Skin

‘A dazzling coming-of-age novel with an unforgettable heroine’ Red

‘Serves up a taste of Jamaica that will have you craving coconut drops, gizzada and sweet potato pudding’ The Times

‘Wonderful, tender, vivid’ Glamour

©2024 Ishi Robinson (P)2024 Penguin Audio

 Caribbean Creators Coming of Age Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature Heartfelt Dream
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Critic reviews

‘Ishi Robinson’s debut serves up a taste of Jamaica that will have you craving coconut drops, gizzada and sweet potato pudding . . . this engaging coming-of-age tale shows a challenging side of Jamaican life through the eyes of an appealing protagonist’
I cherished every moment spent with Pumkin in this mesmerizing and poignant exploration of familial love and self-discovery. Robinson's narrative is infused with passion, delicately balancing stunning flavors and humor to create a feast for the senses. This captivating tale will linger in your heart long after the final page. An absolute must-read (Abi Daré, bestselling author of The Girl With the Louding Voice)
Delightful. This tender, humorous, coming-of-age tale celebrates the flavours and language of Jamaica (Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake)
The word-of-mouth sensation that's making waves . . . A searing coming-of-age novel set in 90s Jamaica that tells the story of irrepressible Pumkin Patterson . . . This luminous tale with its infectious heroine is perfect summer reading (Irenosen Okojie)
Vibrant, affecting and joyfully uplifting. I felt completely transported, and was cheering Pumkin along every step of the way! (Lucy Diamond, author of Anything Could Happen)
A dazzling coming-of-age novel set in the 1990s, with an unforgettable heroine (Sarra Manning)
A story of uplifting love and joyful Jamaican-recipes
Robinson is a tender and vivid writer, teasing out themes of identity, love, and the search for belonging. Sweetness in the Skin is a ode to the families we create for ourselves. Pumkin is a wonderful main character you are willing to succeed
Poignant and emotional, with touches of both humour and sorrow (Julia Quinn, bestselling author of Bridgerton)
This story by Ishi Robinson is a contemporary novel about family struggles, learning French, and, my favourite: baking. If those concepts don't hook you, I don't know what will. Sweetness in the Skin is perfect for anyone looking for a good ol' coming-of-age story, as it follows a young, lovable main character.
All stars
Most relevant
I went looking for novels by contemporary Jamaican writers and glad I found this book.

It wasn’t a perfect book- overwritten in places and this urge to explain Jamaican culture in places to the reader was annoying instead of letting the reader discover it (if non-Jamaican) or recognise it if Jamaican or Caribbean.

Whilst I struggled with all Jamaican writers STILL writing about colour and race as if it is still colonial times, I enjoyed the cultural touch points, the familiar references and an emotional journey that is the reality for too many Jamaicans.

There are dark skinned Jamaicans who are wealthy and snobby as well. Not all “big men” in Jamaica are white. Boots quote that Jamaicans are still living on a plantation and playing the roles we have played since slavery is more or less correct, the story doesn’t reflect the strides made by black Jamaicans.

Once again here is a story where dark skinned people are evil, except for Boots and Tamara and light skinned people are kind.

Note Pumpkin is still a light skinned girl who needs rescuing from the horrors of ghetto Jamaica populated by evil dark skinned people. Jamaican writers need to do better in their representation of race and colour and reflect the evolution of Jamaica along race and class lines.

Deja Bowens did a decent job reading this story. But someone should have coached her in her French pronunciations. She nevertheless brought the characters to life.

I love how this novel doesn’t show migration as the ultimate answer for survival for poor Jamaicans. That Jamaica still offers hope and succour for most of us. It touches on running away from our struggles can mean meeting another form of struggle that amplifies one’s otherness. Whilst Sophie wants to lose herself in her proximity to whiteness in order to feel like she belongs to upper middle and brown class of Jamaica, Pumpkin wants to simply feel safe in her skin.

I enjoyed this book nonetheless

A exploration of colour, class, gender & dreams of migration in Modern day Jamaica

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How true to Jamaican life this may be for some that live on that beautiful island! The narrator is softly spoken and nails the different characters perfectly! The story line was very well written!! This is definitely a great read!!

Just how real this seemed! WONDERFULLY WRITTEN!

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A warm, touching, tenderly written story about owning who you are and where you’ve come from. Set against a backdrop of being loved, wanted and creating the family that will nurture your hopes and dreams.

Coming of any age story

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Pumkin is an abused child and master baker. She is adored by her aunt and grandmother who shield her as much as possible from her mother's own hurt and addictions which cause her to hurt Pumkin. Yet that isn't always possible. We root for Pumkin, a working class girl from Kingston trying to make her way through life and plot an escape from her hellish home in hyper class conscious Jamaica of the 90s. Her love of French might save her, as might her prestigious school's education, but whether she'll get to succeed as her whole self or whether she'll have to hide the extent of her family's poverty as her upward-mobility obsessed beloved aunt and grandmother have taught her, whether she can escape in Jamaica, or if 'foreign' is the only place that will feel like home, are some of the questions at the heart of Ishi Robinson's heartwarming coming of age novel.

The choice to have the narrator use a UK accent, while the dialogue is all in Jamaican is both baffling and seriously jarring at first. It's a first person narrator so that the producers thought Pumkin would think in a southern English accent and speak in a Jamaican suggests Decolonising discourse has not been engaged with.

It's a real achievement to have big questions about intergenerational trauma, parenting, neglect, safeguarding, abuse, care, and community tackled in a novel which also has a lot to say about postcoloniality, class, colourism and injustice in the Caribbean context. To handle these big ideas well, while keeping the novel a pleasure with the abuse obvious but not graphic, through this sweet teen protagonist whose friends are discovering Cher and Clueless (it's set in the 90s), while she navigates a path to survival is incredible.

Ishi Robinson offers us with the Sweetness in the Skin a fully rounded humanised survivor of child abuse while she is going through it, and the children and adults who do and don't fail her. It's a powerful, beautiful tale, told through the eyes of a child, who in many ways is just like other teenage girls who just wanna have fun.

Don't miss this.

An excellent companion is/to Merle Hodge's classic Crick Crack Monkey.

Caribbean Care Exemplified

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Love everything about this, recognising difference and the grass is rarely green where we think it is

Cultural realness

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