MMGM review: The Secret of Honeycake

I'm posting today with the fantastic Marvelous Middle Grade Mondays blog hop hosted by Greg Pattridge of Always in the Middle. Check out Greg's blog for a list of additional middle grade reviews. 

I'm pretty sure I learned about this book from one of my fellow MMGM bloggers--they've been tipping me off to the best books lately.

 

Title: The Secret of Honeycake

Author: Kimberly Newton Fusco

Publication Info: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2025. 363 pages.

Source: Library

Blurb (from Goodreads):

Hurricane is quiet while her Aunt Clare is a force of nature with very particular ideas--and a host of Latin sayings to back them up. When Hurricane gets stuck living with her, she retreats into herself...until a series of unexpected friends, including a mangy cat, help her find her voice in a whole new way.

With a name like Hurricane, you'd think this girl would take the world by storm. But instead, she's almost invisible. And when her sister gets tuberculosis, Hurricane is sent to live in the city with her Aunt Claire, an intimidating and disapproving presence surrounded by stodgy furniture and stodgier ideas. Like no dirty stray cats in the house. And certainly not as pets!

But Aunt Claire doesn't know quite what she's up against--Hurricane may be quiet, but she's about to discover that she's also strong. Before long a shy cat, a gentle chauffeur and a friendly boy (who may smell a little of fish) teach Hurricane to find her voice. And just maybe, Aunt Claire knows a thing or two she can teach Hurricane as well.

It turns out that that you don't always have to be loud to be heard.

My Review:
I loved this book. It was just perfect for what I needed right now, for one thing--nothing too dire happens, people are generally good, and love wins in the end.

From the opening chapters, which capture beautifully  on the coast of Maine in 1930, where a girl-child can run wild and the biggest problem she has is a repressed and unimaginative schoolmarm, to the drastic change that feels like it ruins everything, to the final resolution, it all feels paced just right. And while the story is Hurricane's story, there's a very real sense in which it is Aunt Claire's story. I once read a critic who argued that Anne of Green Gables is really Marilla's story, because she is the character who grows and changes rather than Anne, in many ways in this book it is less Hurricane who changes than her aunt.

Yes, the child learns to speak for herself and stand for herself, makes a new friend or two--and never really adapts to city life. But Aunt Claire... Claire has spent half a lifetime trying to be someone she's not, having allowed her late husband and his family to make her over in their image. But Hurricane gradually brings back to her the girl she was when she was growing up in Hurricane's house, on Hurricane's shore.

At initial meeting, neither Hurricane nor the reader think there's anything sympathetic about the aunt's character, and a lesser writer might have left her that way and focused on how Hurricane gets around her. But Fusco does better: she lets Aunt Claire keep her somewhat brusque and crusty exterior--and still undergo a marvelous transformation. Turns out there's more than one woman here who needs to find her own voice!

 
My Recommendation:
A feel-good read that I think kids will like and adults may like even better, for the extra depth they can see--particularly how Claire is the result of the kind of forced transformation she is trying to shoe-horn onto Hurricane, and how Claire comes to see that herself. I'm definitely reading the author's other books.

 

FTC Disclosure: I checked The Secret of Honeycake out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."  



Rebecca M. Douglass, 2025
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