I was reminded that At the Sign of the Sugared Plum was on my TBR list (thanks for the review, Orangutan Librarian!) when I reread At The House of the Magician. I’m actually pretty thankful I forgot about this last year because I’m not sure if I would be able to read about the black death while COVID-19 was at its worst (I’m not saying that it’s over, but we have vaccines now and that’s a huge thing).

At the Sign of the Sugared Plum starts with Hannah arriving in London, the city where all the nobility (and their rubbish) are. Hannah is excited to help her sister at her shop selling sweetmeats, but she’s come at the wrong time – the plague is starting. The rest of the book is basically about Hannah’s life as the plague gets progressively worse.

In terms of plot, there’s not much going on for most of the book and what we see if the slow changes to Hannah’s life. But when things start happening, it all rushes forward, which come to think of it is similar to how the Black Death was depicted in the book. You’re fine one day, and then in pain and dying the next. Hooper does a great job showing the increasing panic in the city and escalating the tension without using conventional methods (a goal, a villain, etc).

I also really liked the characters in the book. Hannah was a sympathetic girl, and I liked her friendship with Abby and her close relationship with her sister. There isn’t really a villain in this book, but most of the characters felt real and I really enjoyed getting to know them, even in those terrible circumstances.

Many parts of the book resonated with what we experienced last year. There were people laughing off the seriousness of it all when the plague started, there were masks of a sort, all sorts of rumours (fake news) were spread, and people even kept their distance from one another. While we have made improvements in our understanding of science, it seems like the human reaction to pandemics hasn’t really changed.

At the end of the book, Hooper shares a few recipes for sweetmeats mentioned throughout the story. They sound delicious, although I have not tried any of them. At the Sign of the Sugared Plum is a short but engaging story about life in London during one of its most infamous periods, and I would definitely recommend this to fans of historical fiction.