Ishi Robinson Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Ishi Robinson is a published author.

She was born in Kingston, Jamaica, where she grew up. Ishi is a Canadian citizen and has resided in a variety of places such as Toronto, London, Rome, and Bern. She currently resides in Berlin along with her husband.

The first work that she ever had published was when she was eleven years old. It was a short story that was featured in Jamaica’s national newspaper. She was seventeen years old when she decided to begin a weekly column that was featured in The Jamaica Observer and was largely about topics relating to life as a teenager in Kingston. Ishi had also written a weekly column that was about life living as an expat in Rome, which was published in an online magazine that is since defunct.

It was in Berlin that Ishi returned to fiction writing, and she has published short stories in different online publications and also one anthology. Her debut fictional novel came out in 2024 and is titled Sweetness in the Skin.

Sweetness in the Skin is a 2024 book by Ishi Robinson. If you’ve been searching for an engaging new book to read, this coming of age story is the perfect one for you that revolves around a Jamaican girl who wants to make her way out of her dysfunctional family through baking to try and make opportunity happen for herself.

This is a story set among ‘heartbreak, hopefulness, and mirth’ (Charmaine Wilkerson), and a book that author Julia Quinn says makes you think about ‘what it means to be a good mother’. Readers looking for a book with heart and depth will be happy they found this one.

Main character Pumkin Patterson is a girl of thirteen years old. She’s residing in a very small house with two rooms in Kingston, Jamaica. She lives with her grandmother, who wants to improve the social standing of the family. She also lives with her Aunt Sophie, who wants a new life to live in Paris for herself and Pumkin, and her mother Paulette, who is usually not at home.

Sophie ends up getting the chance to go to France and move there for work. With the chance in front of her, she’s not going to let it go. She takes the opportunity and says that she will send for her niece after a year has gone by. The only thing that Pumkin would have to do is to take the French entrance exam and pass it and she could go to school there.

Then Pumkin’s grandmother passes away and she ends up being left alone with her mother, who is fairly volatile. Then her estranged father decides to come by which makes everything worse. He’s still just as conniving and lazy as he has ever been, and it appears that the fortunes of the house have changed for the worse.

Pumkin is going to have to find some type of way that she can come up with the money for her French exam. That way she’ll be able to get out of the house at last and get back to living with her aunt in France the way that they had always planned. She has a moment of inspiration and realizes that she could channel the passion that she has for baking into a real business that makes money.

Pumkin puts her skills to the test and whips up batches of coconut drops, sweet potato pudding, and chocolate cakes. Everything is going well and business is booming, but of course that can’t be enough. When her mother and the school find out what she has been doing, it might not be too long before all that she has worked hard to build up falls apart right in front of her eyes.

Dramatic and funny at times, this is a story about a younger girl who is doing her best to try and figure out her own identity and where it is that she best fits in. Can Pumkin make her way to be with her aunt, and will she be able to find herself along the way? Read this book from Ishi Robinson to find out!