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Black Cake: The No 2 New York Times Bestseller by Charmaine Wilkerson

32 reviews

jennabeck13's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4/5)

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

About 380 pages

Eleanor Bennett’s family has been in shambles for years. Eleanor and her son, Byron, haven’t seen her daughter, Benny, in years. Including at her husband’s funeral…. So when Eleanor is determining her final wishes and her will, her biggest priority is to get her children back together. But when Byron and Benny are called by Eleanor’s lawyer, they get the last two things they would have expected, their mother’s signature black cake and a recording detailing family secrets. These family secrets completely re-write the past and leave the family reeling.

Contemporary fiction has become one of my favorite genres over the past year! I think whether I like them is heavily influenced by my ability to connect and empathize with the characters. Charmaine made that quite easy in this book. I loved all of the characters and the complexities of their stories. I think she did a terrific job of meshing the past and present timelines. And everything was beautifully woven together by the end. The pace was a little slow for me, but that is my only complaint!

Favorite Quote: “The beauty of a thing justified its plunder. And nothing was more beautiful than a girl who was fearless.”

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fkshg8465's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

So much goodness in here. Lots of strands of stories odien disjointed but ultimately all woven back together. Could’ve used a better editor, but overall, an important story to tell.

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jaduhluhdabooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A powerful story about family, loss, and the constant but inescapable linger of grief. It’s about how stories shape and reshape who we are and how we choose to become who we are. It’s about the reality of being children of immigrants, harboring the challenges of biracialism and Black excellence wrapped in the pressures of parental expectation and societal binaries. Journeying with Byron and Benny was sobering and humbling. Mathilda, Pearl, Bunny, Gibbs, Lin, Mathilda, and so many others shaped Covey’s life and so many of the choices that she made to protect her and her family.

Trivial and beautiful.

I am huge supporter and believer in the power of story and narrative. There is so much life given to words when the speaker is someone who has experienced and lived the realities of what is being revealed. This book reminded of just how powerful narrative is and how much of normative society seeks to control so much of the Black and Indigenous voice. From food to culture, Charmaine take us on a journey of discovering secrecy, loyalty, and all in all, survival - as we travel in grief, longing, and deep deep love with the Bennet family. This is a story about roots and how Black and cultural tradition is a anticolonial stand a against whiteness, intrusive, primitive men who came to take and destroy and reinvent. But the Black Cake stands and withstands generations and time and it is a powerful metaphor of persperverance and family. Many layers to unpack in this read, but I’m honored to have sat in it for some time.

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kelly_e's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Title: Black Cake
Author: Charmaine Wilkerson
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4.25
Pub Date: February 1, 2022

T H R E E • W O R D S

Layered • Delectable • Memorable

📖 S Y N O P S I S

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

💭 T H O U G H T S

After a few 'Read with Jenna' misses, I was hesitant to read Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson's debut novel. With a little urging from some wonderful ladies in my online book club, I decided I must give it a try, and am so glad that I did.

Yes, it took me awhile to settle into the story, but once I was invested, I was all in. There's a touch of mystery to this character driven, multigenerational debut. The writing is precise, the structure is strong, and the characters are well flushed out. There are so many layers to the complex family history that really showcases the messiness that is family.

There are a lot of characters combined with shifting time periods and places, which came across as jumbled at time, and meant I often found myself needing to go back to catch something I'd missed. At other times, it felt slightly repetitive, and certainly longer than it needed to be.

One of my biggest takeaways was reflecting on the role and importance food plays in our lives. Food is one of those cross-culture, non-verbal ways of communicating with and taking care of the ones we love. Of showing we care. Of keeping our history alive. This narrative also showcases how betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names, are passed down through the generations, and how it all shapes the past, the present and the future.

Black Cake is a journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch. I was left asking myself how this was a debut novel? Charmaine Wilkerson is a writer to watch and I cannot wait to see what she writes next.

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• readers with diverse tastes
• multigenerational saga lovers
• fans of food in books

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"Question yourself, yes, but don’t doubt yourself. There’s a difference."

"More people’s lives have been shaped by violence than we like to think. And more people’s lives have been shaped by silence than we think."

"The people who love us the most have the power to hurt us the most too."

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nomonbooks's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book was really well crafted. As Charmaine says, even when stories are made up they typically contain emotional truths and I felt like this book contained so many. I was particularly struck by the relationship between Benny and her parents. The clear love yet horribly fractured relationship. It really hit me because in most situations of fractured families I can’t imagine getting into that situation. But, in this one there was so much love there it seems like the pitfall was easy. The ending made me cry – and honestly throughout it was so emotional. I also knew nothing about the Chinese-Caribbean experience. I knew that people were brought from India to the Caribbean as indentured labourers but I hadn’t realised it was China too. Also, I hadn’t realised just how many barriers people, like my grandmother faced after coming to the UK for Windrush. I knew about the racism but I hadn’t quite realised the limitation on professional prospects; and just how much of an achievement my grandmother’s qualifications were. Yes, this book was fiction. But it was that magical, educational type of fiction that draws on real emotions, experiences, places and times and weaves them together into a story poignant, beautiful and deftly woven through time and space. This is a must read, and I’m sad it took me so long to start it. Thank you Netgalley for the ARC!

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beriboo's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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emmehooks's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I liked this so much more than I anticipated! Great writing, especially for a debut novel, nuanced characters, and a very interesting and meaningful story. Major themes of sacrifice, love, guilt/grief, community, and searching for a greater good

My only complaint is that sometimes the transition between characters in chapters was confusing and took a few rereads to settle into the new POV.

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thecriticalreader's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

I picked Black Cake as my free add-on because it was named one of the Book of the Month Club’s Book of the Year Finalists. All of the other finalists I had either read or did not appeal to me.

Blurb:

The book begins with two siblings, Byron and Benny, as they meet together for the first time in years because of their mother’s death. Byron is a successful and famous ocean scientist, who has achieved everything his Caribbean American parents expected of him, yet who struggles with emotional unavailability and interpersonal relationships. Benny is an aspiring café owner who has not spoken to her family in years after they reacted negatively to her dropping out of a prestigious university and coming out as multisexual. They meet together to hear a recording by their mother explaining that her past is not what she has led them to believe, forcing the siblings to reconsider their heritage, relationships, and identities.

Review:

Black Cake has a fluid structure: Wilkerson switches between perspectives, modes of storytelling, and time periods in order to tell her intergenerational story. Instead of being confusing or obnoxious, the constant change between perspectives and time frames serve the story well, as they allow Wilkerson to disclose information at a pace that suits the story as well as address the complexities and backstories of multiple characters. I found Byron and Benny to be a little obnoxious and childish at the beginning, but I grew to appreciate their struggles and personalities as I learned more about their backstories. I also really enjoyed learning about their mother’s history, which was full of twists and turns, and which painted a wonderful portrait of a strong, capable—although not perfect—woman and mother. The symbolism of their mother’s Black Cake recipe beautifully tied the story together.

Black Cake is divided into four parts, and by the end of the third part, I felt that things were starting to reach their natural concluding point. However, the book still had another part to it (approximately 140 more pages). As I read part four, I started liking Black Cake less and less. In the first three parts, the tragic accidents and serendipitous twists of fate served the narrative but stopped just short of being unbelievable. Unfortunately, Wilkerson overuses such devices in the fourth part, and the book lost all sense of believability for me.

For example, I was rather confused as to why the main characters were so afraid of retaliation from Little Man's family, despite it appearing extremely unlikely to me that such people would a) piece anything together and b) have the desire, decades later, to do something about it. Perhaps it would have been more believable if Wilkerson had showed earlier on an example of his family being excessively vindictive or clever.

Each improbable turn of events was too coincidental, too well-placed—in short, too fictional.

The story seems to lose focus in part four as it tried to include resolutions for all of its characters, and Benny and Byron’s character arcs fall by the wayside. A couple of chapters seem completely superfluous, especially one in which a completely unimportant side character faces police brutality. The incident is only tenuously related to the main story and is never referred to again after that singular chapter. If Black Cake had stopped while it was ahead around the 250-page mark, it would have been a solid 4 or 4.25 rating for me. Its meandering and unbelievability toward the end, however, brings it down to a 3.25 for me.

The Run-Down:

You will probably like Black Cake if: you enjoy multi-generational stories with complex characters, books that celebrate the diversity of its characters, and themes of heritage, family, personal sacrifice, and identity.

You might not like Black Cake if you dislike shifting POVs and large casts of characters. Readers who have a hard time suspending their disbelief when it comes to certain narrative coincidences and connections might also find this book frustrating.

A Similar Book:

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Similarities between these two books include:

· An epic plot that spans multiple generations of a single family

· Themes of identity, heritage, belonging

· A main character who runs away and changes their identity

· Characters who get caught up in illegal gangster activity

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