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A Novel
by Marissa Higgins
From the author of A Good Happy Girl, a lesbian screwball comedy following two exes who turn to online dating after their dramatic split—only to end up seeing the same woman.
In Sweetener, recently separated wives, both named Rebecca, can't seem to disentangle their lives. Lonely and depressed, Rebecca is scraping by as a part-time cashier at an organic grocery store. Despite having less than ten dollars in her bank account, she lists herself as a sugar mama on a lesbian hookup app. Enter Charlotte, a charismatic artist who, unbeknownst to Rebecca, is also dating her wife.
Meanwhile, the other Rebecca, a newly sober doctoral student, has renewed her efforts to foster a child. The catch? Because the Rebeccas are still legally married, she needs her wife to attend parenting classes with her as part of the approval process.
Neither of them asks whether this means they're getting back together, but the idea alone sends Charlotte into a tailspin. As Charlotte navigates her desire for each Rebecca—or her desire for attention—her world becomes more and more Gumby-like and surreal. It doesn't help that she's been wearing a fake pregnancy belly to all of her dates, and only one of the Rebeccas knows it isn't real.
Sumptuous, sticky, and slightly absurd, Sweetener brings together three women fixated on the fantasy of motherhood, and trying to figure out what kind of mother, partner, or sugar mama they want to be.
"Sweetener is bleak and twisted, horny and brutal, intimate and freaky. Few things are worthy of sharing a title with an Ariana Grande album, but this novel absolutely is." —Anna Dorn, author of Perfume & Pain
"Slick, filthy, and unhinged in her signature Higginsian way, Sweetener is the messy queer read whose taste lingers long after you've swallowed it whole." —Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy
This information about Sweetener was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Marissa Higgins (she/her/hers) is a lesbian writer. She is the author of the novel A Good Happy Girl.
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