Sweetener A novel

Higgins (A Good Happy Girl) shines in this sharp-witted novel of women behaving badly. Rebecca, recently separated from her wife--a doctoral student also named Rebecca--is a part-time cashier at a local organic food market in Washington, D.C. Even though she's broke, she just changed her status on a sugar mama dating app from "seeker to provider." Fellow app user Charlotte, who happens to be the sugar mama of doctoral student Rebecca, has heard about cashier Rebecca and is curious to meet her, so she reaches out on the app, pretending to be a seeker. Thus begins a tangled love triangle between three women figuring out who they are to each other and themselves, especially as the Rebeccas attend parenting classes together to support doctoral student Rebecca's desire to become a foster parent. Higgins's characters might be a bit of a mess, but their thoughts are rendered with precision, whether in cashier Rebecca's reflections on her unfulfilling work ("I don't believe I've ever impacted a person, not even and especially not myself") or Charlotte's motivations for wearing a prosthetic pregnancy belly ("Charlotte makes magic happen in her mind--an understanding moves through the women, relative strangers, that her belly does make her a good person, a sweet person.... A person who deserves just a little grace"). The question of parenthood haunts the three women, like a destination without a map, and the final reveal is a knockout. Readers will have a blast. Agent: Katie Grimm, Curtis Brown. (Aug.)

Estranged wives, both named Rebecca, become involved with the same woman in this sophomore novel. The Rebeccas--one a doctoral student, the other a cashier at an organic grocery store--have been separated for six months. Theirs was a volatile marriage, marred by student Rebecca's alcoholism, but now she is sober, on her medication, and eager to become a foster parent. But in order to get approved, student Rebecca needs cashier Rebecca, who herself grew up in foster care, to pretend they are still happily married. Cashier Rebecca isn't entirely opposed--she desperately wants her wife back if she is stable--but she has her own entanglements to manage. Despite her precarious personal financials, she has presented herself as a "provider" on an app that pairs sugar babies with sugar mamas and connected with the pregnant Charlotte. But little does she know that Charlotte isn't expecting and isn't in need of a romantic benefactor--Charlotte likes wearing a prosthetic pregnancy belly and is using her inheritance money to serve as student Rebecca's ("her Rebecca") sugar mama. The novel's premise smacks of screwball, but the bleak interior lives of her cast keep comedy on the sidelines. Chapters alternate focus between Charlotte and cashier Rebecca, and in both, we hear how much they hate themselves and watch as myopia blinds them to the needs and experiences of others. Higgins' prose has moments of evocative wit, such as, "Her voice sounds strained and controlled, like she is giving boarding announcements for a rocket designated to explode for the pleasure of the rich and perverse." But she allows her characters so many flights of fancy that the line between imagination and reality is blurred, and in some scenes it's difficult to tell what is actually happening. A queasy look at money, sex, and motherhood with protagonists that will fascinate some readers and exhaust others. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.