Review: Black Cake (by Charmaine Wilkerson)

My Rating:  4 stars

Charmaine Wilkerson's debut novel Black Cake is one of those books where a key component of what makes the story work is the "journey of discovery" where important elements of the characters' pasts are revealed slowly and gradually over the course of the entire narrative. Because of this, it's best to go into this one knowing as little as possible outside of the main characters and basic premise.  

To that point, the story revolves around estranged siblings Bryon and Benny, who are forced to reunite after their mother Eleanor Bennett dies and leaves behind an inheritance consisting of a traditional Caribbean black cake and a voice recording — along with strict instructions that they must put aside their differences and come together to share the cake as well as listen to the recording.   The story that their mother shares with them is a harrowing one filled with heartbreak and loss, but also love, courage, and resilience.  Will hearing their mother's story and understanding her past mend the siblings' once close relationship or drive them further apart?

I definitely enjoyed this well-written debut, though in all honesty, there were times when I really wasn't sure where the story was going.  In addition to a lot of jumping around in terms of timelines and plot points, the way some of the characters were introduced took a bit too long at times, to the point that it felt like the story was meandering off course — but just when you start to wonder what the purpose of all this long discourse is, Wilkerson would suddenly veer the story back into relevance, and then, the previous sections would start to make a little more sense.  In terms of the characters — while I didn't feel much of an emotional connection to them, I liked all of them well enough to want to root for them and also care about what happens to them. 

 Overall, this was a solid debut and definitely a worthwhile read.  It did take a little bit of patience at times though due to certain parts of the story taking awhile to get to the point, but I feel that the effort does pay off in the end.

Received ARC from Ballantine Books via NetGalley