Sugarkiller doesn’t ask for permission: it steps onto the scene in razor-sharp heels and a smile you can’t quite tell whether it kisses or bites. Mireia Yévenes’s new novel is a noir thriller set in the underworld of the ultra-rich, where luxury smells like danger and desire is always a bargaining chip. If you’re drawn to stories that blend psychological tension, restrained eroticism, and a subtle critique of power, this book is already calling your name from the nearest bookstore.
Macarena is 27 and studies Fine Arts. By day, she’s an apparently discreet young woman; by night, a fake sugar baby who drugs and robs wealthy men under shifting identities. She believes she controls the game, that she masters every mask, every glance, every tampered drink. Until a police officer who’s been tracking her closely makes her an offer she can’t refuse: infiltrate the mansion of Johannes Klaus, a tech magnate in Sitges linked to the disappearance of two escorts. Seduce him or face prison. There is no third option.
What begins as a strategic mission turns into an electrically charged mental duel. Johannes Klaus doesn’t fit the profile of a victim, and soon Macarena senses that he knows more about her than he should. In that exchange of silences, suspicions, and heavy-laden glances, the novel reveals its true edge: power exercised without raising one’s voice, desire blurred into threat.
One of Sugarkiller’s greatest strengths is its atmosphere. Sitges sheds its postcard brightness to become a stage of private shadows, exclusive parties, and conversations laced with traps. Nothing is innocent, no one is entirely who they claim to be. The pacing is precise, almost surgical, and each chapter pushes further into a territory where the reader also begins to distrust their own instincts.
Mireia Yévenes’s perspective, shaped by her background in Fine Arts and her work in sexual education and the exploration of intimacy from a feminist standpoint, is felt in every fold of the story. This is not a simple game of seduction and crime, but an unsettling reflection on the body as a tool, money as a shield, and identity as a fragile construction. Dark, sexy, and sharp, this thriller doesn’t aim to please, but to tighten the tension.
If you’re in the mood for novels that keep your pulse racing and leave you slightly wary of every character, this is your next read. Dare to step inside the mansion.
