What do you think?
Rate this book
Sunburn
Selected as an Evening Standard 'one to watch in 2023'
It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.
Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.
Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.
But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. But only one can offer her real happiness.
Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp.
It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.
Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.
Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.
But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. But only one can offer her real happiness.
Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp.
288 pages, Paperback
First published June 22, 2023
2,688 people are currently reading
89.3k people want to read
About the author
Chloe Michelle Howarth
2books597followersChloe Michelle Howarth was born in July 1996. She grew up in the West Cork countryside, which has served as an inspiration for her writing. She attended university at IADT in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, where she studied English, Media and Cultural Studies. Chloe currently lives in Brighton. Sunburn is her debut novel.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,351 reviews
January 19, 2025
gays who used to be catholic be like *heavy religious imagery centered around worshipping your partner that portrays love as both sin and salvation and intimacy as the closest interaction with god* 🧎🏼♀�
August 22, 2024
susannah you would have loved good luck, babe by chappell roan
February 15, 2025
A masterpiece of a debut!
The passion and power of first love can rattle loose the bolts of one's heart and rebuild it into a shape that forever bears the signatures and scars from its formative experience. Such can be said of my own heart from Chloe Michelle Howarth’s searingly gorgeous sapphic novel, Sunburn, which has practically reprogramed my heartbeat to its poetic rhythms. �Now is the time between birth and slaughter� begins this breathtaking bildungsroman that takes intimate investigations on the multitudes of change felt at the cusp of adulthood to show how they become milestones of the self in this interim between the cradle and grave. It is a story of Lucy and her awakening desires for Susannah, a desire so great she feels her body cannot possibly contain it, yet in the face of an unwelcoming society that feeds on rumors and castigations she feels her desire is shameful and contorts from happiness to fit the image others want for her. It is also a story of shifting dynamics between friends and family as �things fall apart when you grow up.� Sunburns reads in a blaze of poetic glory fueled by intense and introspective prose that captures adolescent anxiety overcome by emotion across a narrative of being �pulled in two very different directions,� of love in conflict with one’s community and the strength required to walk away from shame into self-actualization.
�Since I have known her, Susannah has been a flame in bloom. She took me from ash and made me human. I fear if she spends one more day in the garden, her flame will dwindle, and to ash I will return.�
This book skyrocketed to my “favorites� shelf. I really enjoyed buddy reading this one with Liv (you should definitely read their incredible review here) and discussing it along the way. Set in rural Ireland in the early 90’s, Sunburn follows Lucy between the ages of 15 to 20, pulling us along her internal monologues as she tries to ride the currents of her own emotions while fearing she will dash upon the rocks of public image and ostracization. Her focus, growing into an obsession and outpouring of love, is always Susannah. �The way that Lucy feels about Susannah is the book, � Haworth explains in and we experience Lucy process major moments of growth over the years in relation to her love for Susannah. It begins in trepidation, realizing �I am reading deeper into her unconscious movements,� but initially completely unable to recognize what she is feeling is a crush. Its adorable. The two begin to grow closer and closer through their teenage years and eventually reveal their shared desires for one another, unleashing a universe of passion and new concerns that carry the second half of the novel.
Chloe Michelle Howarth’s prose really sends the novel on an emotional roller coaster that made this not only one of the most underlined books I’ve read in years but also one that shook my heart and soul so gloriously that it was probably detectable on a seismograph. Howarth seizes upon teenage angst and over-dramatic flair as an opportunity to push her prose into ecstatic expressions. You get some killer lines like �hate me if you want to hate me, I’d love the attention,� that make me love this book even more, but also Howarth teases that, despite there being some really sharp symbolism in the book, Lucy’s mind often overanalyzes everything in a really relatable way.
BEEN THERE. Though this is not language Lucy can vocalize so much of her outpourings for Susannah arrive in the form of letters, adding another wonderful dynamic to the narrative but also nudging a primary theme about hiding desire.
�And although we go far to escape them, at one time or another, we must return to Crossmore. To the roots of ourselves.�
The rural Irish setting is key to the novel and to Howarth’s heart, with Crossmore and the visual landscape reflecting her own natural surroundings. �I wanted it to be really unapologetically Irish, with Irish names and such,� Howarth said in the , �I wouldn’t have enjoyed writing something that didn’t include that� There is a connection with nature and the way �the days drip by as slow as half-melted candle wax,� could also be applied to the slow but sensory pacing of the novel that really helps you feel like you inhabit the space alongside the characters. Add to this the ways that emotions and the seasons are often intertwined (or, as Liv points out, the way light reflects the state of Susannah), with summer being the season of outpourings of passion:
Much of the novel takes place in 1992, which is one year before Ireland would (later in 2015 Ireland was the as well as allow trans people to ) and in a rural community where the idea of “traditional values� reign supreme. It is a place where �motherhood is the nearest thing to an inherited career that I can hope for,� and people are kept in line by rumours and outcast for being different.
Susannah and Lucy have different reactions to these sorts of rumors with Susannah already implicated due to the split of her wealthy parents and a mother that runs around with men. �I fear that Crossmore is too deep in me, and I would not know how to exist elsewhere,� Lucy worries, and this fear along with losing her mother’s love if she were to openly admit she is a lesbian, become a rift between Susannah and her.
�With or without me, she will go on blooming, she will always be a glorious thing. I would rather lose everything than lose her. I realise this too late��
In many ways Sunburn is about choices that define identities with the choice between Susannah and Crossmore in general a major struggle for teenage Lucy. Before Susannah, Lucy struggles to understand herself and uncertain why she can’t feel anything for boys like Martin the way she thinks she should. Once she enters a relationship with Susannah, however, Lucy feels her true self, feels purpose, feels pulsating with desire to live and dream.
She also feels a validated sense of self worth. �All along I thought Susannah was like a god,� she muses, having obsessed over her for years, �now I kind of feel like a god too,� or that they �are equal parts.� There is the aspect that she feels validated but, like every aspect of this book, it is viewed in context with—and because of—Susannah.
Susannah gives her meaning she didn’t know she had before. But while �neither of us wants to be a cousin that the village isn’t supposed to know about,� Susannah wants to be able to be openly a couple while Lucy fears the social repercussions. �Even with all the love that I have for her, I’m not ready to be out. Not yet. I’m just somebody in love with Susannah. That’s enough.� Lucy wants it all, Crossmore and Susannah, and neither to define her.
However, we see this isn’t the case. When Lucy allows Crossmore and the opinions of others to define her, it is a feeling of shame, sin, and falseness. �I pretend so well I almost believe myself,� she says. When they are caught together she thinks �heaven is fractured; Susannah and I are among you now, all you awful sinners,� and even later still clings to the idea that �to be with her is a sin,� until Evelyn finally tells her �Girl, there’s no such thing as sin.� Which returns to the idea of Susannah as a god figure, because in Crossmore we are also reminded of the deep Catholic hold on rural Ireland.
I can’t help but mention Sister Michael from admitting “I do love a good statue� as a jest at how much iconography permeates Catholicism, which is also present in Lucy’s veneration of Susannah. There is a lot of religious symbolism in her imagery of Susannah (burning fire for instance) and the worship comes interlaced with guilt and sin. It is a really incisive linguistic tell of her Catholicism and how her desire for Susannah is both viewed as a move towards something holy but also fearful as a fall from grace. Having been raised in the Catholic church and being close with ex-christian queer peers, trust me, this is totally a thing.
�All I’ve done is fall for Susannah. It is not shameful or radical or wild. Anybody would fall for Susannah. I never meant to upset anybody.�
This book is a burning indictment on the harms caused from homophobia. All Lucy and Susannah wanted was love. To be able to be, say, go to a dance together without it being a scandal. To simply exist in the world together without it being turned into a whole thing to give the rumor or hatemongers something to rage about to fill the voids in their life.
Among the harshest aspects are the ways those who claim to love her react. �To Mother, I am no longer Lucy,� she thinks as her mother ignores her and refuses to feed her (Liv makes a brilliant point that food is used symbolically for love in the novel, from withholding it to Martin’s lumpy and cold meals reflective of her inability to truly love him).
Mothers figures are a key theme to the novel, with Lucy seeing how Susannah wilts when her mother leaves and fears the same for herself if she does not lie about her true self to regain her mother’s approval. �Either I can be who Mother expects me to be, or I can be whoever I want to be. Each seems as treacherous as the other. I will find myself, soon, I just need to stop acting my age and grow up.� And life changes are coming at her fast.
�The life that I know will morph out of shape. The girls will be far away. I will be somebody different. I am grown, and yet I have never felt so young.�
Though this attempt to be what her mother wants instead of herself causes her to analyze every aspect of her life during one of lifes biggest moments of transitions: graduating school and moving beyond the gates of adolescence. Sunburn so eloquently captures that feeling of excitement yet also sadness during moments of big change and makes it felt so deeply I was right back at 18 watching friendships being packed into boxes as we dispersed around the country. �Something has changed. We are not the people that we used to be,� Lucy observes, and this seeps into every relationship she knows. Especially Martin, who was a friendship so easy but now under the context of dating to appease her mother everything feels fragile and timid.
Martin is a really endearing character and Howarth does an excellent job setting up the major life choice between Martin and a life with Susannah—or at least a life embracing her sexuality—by having Martin be a perfect choice on all fronts all except for her sexuality. He �is so kind and caring and offers a secure future,� her family approves, society approves, but she can never truly love him. Will she find that this element of love is more important than hiding behind a socially acceptable mask?
This becomes the big lesson of the novel. �I can have her, she says, but it has to be all of her, and it has to be honest, and it has to be now,� yet can she walk away from the people of her life, from Crossmore, to embrace this? �We live with our eyes closed, Susannah and her money, Martin and his land, and me, without the confidence or ability to do anything on my own,� she thinks, and we see how she is often guided by a mother figure because of her inability to stand for herself. Though it is the mothers who hurt her the most, even Maria, the mother figure of her friend group, who will later betray Lucy’s secrets. �If you’d lose them over this, then maybe you never had them at all,� Susannah advises. A harsh truth, but a difficult one to embrace.
�There are so many people in the real world, Lucy. Not everybody is your mother. Not everybody wants to get married off and live on a farm. People would love you the way you are, we just need to find those people�
I could honestly go on about this novel for pages and pages. Sunburn is a towering achievement of queer fiction, of coming-of-age stories, of poetic expression, of just simply being a deeply moving novel. It captures so many specific feelings of riding the tide from childhood into adulthood as the maelstrom of desires, ego, and self-conscious investigations rains down. �Sweet Susannah, where I am a burnt-out star, you are the sun,� says Lucy, and here I sit looking at this novel as if it, too, is the sun. Startlingly gorgeous and nuanced, this is a masterpiece of a debut novel from Chloe Michelle Howarth. It will burn you in its brilliant blaze of passion, and you will be better for it.
5/5
�Susannah is the place where I belong. This is Heaven, this is all I want.�
The passion and power of first love can rattle loose the bolts of one's heart and rebuild it into a shape that forever bears the signatures and scars from its formative experience. Such can be said of my own heart from Chloe Michelle Howarth’s searingly gorgeous sapphic novel, Sunburn, which has practically reprogramed my heartbeat to its poetic rhythms. �Now is the time between birth and slaughter� begins this breathtaking bildungsroman that takes intimate investigations on the multitudes of change felt at the cusp of adulthood to show how they become milestones of the self in this interim between the cradle and grave. It is a story of Lucy and her awakening desires for Susannah, a desire so great she feels her body cannot possibly contain it, yet in the face of an unwelcoming society that feeds on rumors and castigations she feels her desire is shameful and contorts from happiness to fit the image others want for her. It is also a story of shifting dynamics between friends and family as �things fall apart when you grow up.� Sunburns reads in a blaze of poetic glory fueled by intense and introspective prose that captures adolescent anxiety overcome by emotion across a narrative of being �pulled in two very different directions,� of love in conflict with one’s community and the strength required to walk away from shame into self-actualization.
�Since I have known her, Susannah has been a flame in bloom. She took me from ash and made me human. I fear if she spends one more day in the garden, her flame will dwindle, and to ash I will return.�
This book skyrocketed to my “favorites� shelf. I really enjoyed buddy reading this one with Liv (you should definitely read their incredible review here) and discussing it along the way. Set in rural Ireland in the early 90’s, Sunburn follows Lucy between the ages of 15 to 20, pulling us along her internal monologues as she tries to ride the currents of her own emotions while fearing she will dash upon the rocks of public image and ostracization. Her focus, growing into an obsession and outpouring of love, is always Susannah. �The way that Lucy feels about Susannah is the book, � Haworth explains in and we experience Lucy process major moments of growth over the years in relation to her love for Susannah. It begins in trepidation, realizing �I am reading deeper into her unconscious movements,� but initially completely unable to recognize what she is feeling is a crush. Its adorable. The two begin to grow closer and closer through their teenage years and eventually reveal their shared desires for one another, unleashing a universe of passion and new concerns that carry the second half of the novel.
�Another girl like me exists, and she is the most perfect girl in the world. The awful deed is done, our perfect love comes to life. I am hers, and she is mine.�
Chloe Michelle Howarth’s prose really sends the novel on an emotional roller coaster that made this not only one of the most underlined books I’ve read in years but also one that shook my heart and soul so gloriously that it was probably detectable on a seismograph. Howarth seizes upon teenage angst and over-dramatic flair as an opportunity to push her prose into ecstatic expressions. You get some killer lines like �hate me if you want to hate me, I’d love the attention,� that make me love this book even more, but also Howarth teases that, despite there being some really sharp symbolism in the book, Lucy’s mind often overanalyzes everything in a really relatable way.
�Tonight I find myself looking for her scent in the air, her touch in the pillowcase. It’s a strain to find meaning where there is none. It’s such a teenaged thing to do, why can I not stop doing it? Not everything is a symbol. Sometimes the world is plain and obvious. Sometimes the things I feel and the things I want don’t matter.�
BEEN THERE. Though this is not language Lucy can vocalize so much of her outpourings for Susannah arrive in the form of letters, adding another wonderful dynamic to the narrative but also nudging a primary theme about hiding desire.
�And although we go far to escape them, at one time or another, we must return to Crossmore. To the roots of ourselves.�
The rural Irish setting is key to the novel and to Howarth’s heart, with Crossmore and the visual landscape reflecting her own natural surroundings. �I wanted it to be really unapologetically Irish, with Irish names and such,� Howarth said in the , �I wouldn’t have enjoyed writing something that didn’t include that� There is a connection with nature and the way �the days drip by as slow as half-melted candle wax,� could also be applied to the slow but sensory pacing of the novel that really helps you feel like you inhabit the space alongside the characters. Add to this the ways that emotions and the seasons are often intertwined (or, as Liv points out, the way light reflects the state of Susannah), with summer being the season of outpourings of passion:
�The Summer has been just a little bit too warm, the sun has been a little too bright. My thoughts have been a little bit too uncontrollable. And my emotions a little too humid. They only grow more humid. It all just gets stickier. Soon I think I will be unable to go even one day without lying on the grass with her.�
Much of the novel takes place in 1992, which is one year before Ireland would (later in 2015 Ireland was the as well as allow trans people to ) and in a rural community where the idea of “traditional values� reign supreme. It is a place where �motherhood is the nearest thing to an inherited career that I can hope for,� and people are kept in line by rumours and outcast for being different.
�Nasty rumours, which are scarcely confirmed and forever remembered…This is not a forgiving place. The fear of it takes me over. It takes us all over. We all have secrets, everybody is hiding something.�
Susannah and Lucy have different reactions to these sorts of rumors with Susannah already implicated due to the split of her wealthy parents and a mother that runs around with men. �I fear that Crossmore is too deep in me, and I would not know how to exist elsewhere,� Lucy worries, and this fear along with losing her mother’s love if she were to openly admit she is a lesbian, become a rift between Susannah and her.
�With or without me, she will go on blooming, she will always be a glorious thing. I would rather lose everything than lose her. I realise this too late��
In many ways Sunburn is about choices that define identities with the choice between Susannah and Crossmore in general a major struggle for teenage Lucy. Before Susannah, Lucy struggles to understand herself and uncertain why she can’t feel anything for boys like Martin the way she thinks she should. Once she enters a relationship with Susannah, however, Lucy feels her true self, feels purpose, feels pulsating with desire to live and dream.
�At last, I am defined. All my lonely days were not wasted, they led me to this most perfect union, this weaving of our two souls. The parts of me that were once afraid can no longer be found.Perhaps they will come back to terrify me again, but for now, I can’t feel them. For now, I allow myself to be wanted by her.�
She also feels a validated sense of self worth. �All along I thought Susannah was like a god,� she muses, having obsessed over her for years, �now I kind of feel like a god too,� or that they �are equal parts.� There is the aspect that she feels validated but, like every aspect of this book, it is viewed in context with—and because of—Susannah.
� I live in a body that has loved her and I see with eyes that have witnessed her. She is part of my muscles, my tissue, she is unforgettable.�
Susannah gives her meaning she didn’t know she had before. But while �neither of us wants to be a cousin that the village isn’t supposed to know about,� Susannah wants to be able to be openly a couple while Lucy fears the social repercussions. �Even with all the love that I have for her, I’m not ready to be out. Not yet. I’m just somebody in love with Susannah. That’s enough.� Lucy wants it all, Crossmore and Susannah, and neither to define her.
�I always thought a place like Crossmore would kill a person like me, but I realise now that places like Crossmore are made for people like me. There is space for me, for us, out on the edges, among the ruins and the hedges and the stone walls. These things are immovable. They belong to the world and cannot be altered. I hope that Susannah and I are like these things.I carve our initials into trees and scratch them onto rocks, hoping that a piece of us will remain in the landscape.�
However, we see this isn’t the case. When Lucy allows Crossmore and the opinions of others to define her, it is a feeling of shame, sin, and falseness. �I pretend so well I almost believe myself,� she says. When they are caught together she thinks �heaven is fractured; Susannah and I are among you now, all you awful sinners,� and even later still clings to the idea that �to be with her is a sin,� until Evelyn finally tells her �Girl, there’s no such thing as sin.� Which returns to the idea of Susannah as a god figure, because in Crossmore we are also reminded of the deep Catholic hold on rural Ireland.
�Never in all my years of Christianity has there been talk of an angel like this.�
I can’t help but mention Sister Michael from admitting “I do love a good statue� as a jest at how much iconography permeates Catholicism, which is also present in Lucy’s veneration of Susannah. There is a lot of religious symbolism in her imagery of Susannah (burning fire for instance) and the worship comes interlaced with guilt and sin. It is a really incisive linguistic tell of her Catholicism and how her desire for Susannah is both viewed as a move towards something holy but also fearful as a fall from grace. Having been raised in the Catholic church and being close with ex-christian queer peers, trust me, this is totally a thing.
�All I’ve done is fall for Susannah. It is not shameful or radical or wild. Anybody would fall for Susannah. I never meant to upset anybody.�
This book is a burning indictment on the harms caused from homophobia. All Lucy and Susannah wanted was love. To be able to be, say, go to a dance together without it being a scandal. To simply exist in the world together without it being turned into a whole thing to give the rumor or hatemongers something to rage about to fill the voids in their life.
��My love now seems to be an aggressive, political thing. It is the ceaseless search for an identity and then committing to that identity. It is a fight to exist in my own home. Is that not exhausting? Is it worth it? It feels like the good parts of loving have been thrown on the backseat and forgotten about.�
Among the harshest aspects are the ways those who claim to love her react. �To Mother, I am no longer Lucy,� she thinks as her mother ignores her and refuses to feed her (Liv makes a brilliant point that food is used symbolically for love in the novel, from withholding it to Martin’s lumpy and cold meals reflective of her inability to truly love him).
�If everybody loved me as much as they claim to, I don’t think I would be in this position, back and forth between them like a pendulum, always stuck between her and everything else in the world. I am so sick I could scream.�
Mothers figures are a key theme to the novel, with Lucy seeing how Susannah wilts when her mother leaves and fears the same for herself if she does not lie about her true self to regain her mother’s approval. �Either I can be who Mother expects me to be, or I can be whoever I want to be. Each seems as treacherous as the other. I will find myself, soon, I just need to stop acting my age and grow up.� And life changes are coming at her fast.
�The life that I know will morph out of shape. The girls will be far away. I will be somebody different. I am grown, and yet I have never felt so young.�
Though this attempt to be what her mother wants instead of herself causes her to analyze every aspect of her life during one of lifes biggest moments of transitions: graduating school and moving beyond the gates of adolescence. Sunburn so eloquently captures that feeling of excitement yet also sadness during moments of big change and makes it felt so deeply I was right back at 18 watching friendships being packed into boxes as we dispersed around the country. �Something has changed. We are not the people that we used to be,� Lucy observes, and this seeps into every relationship she knows. Especially Martin, who was a friendship so easy but now under the context of dating to appease her mother everything feels fragile and timid.
�Being in his company has become so loaded. Now that he thinks I am almost his girlfriend, it’s like I am no longer his friend…Our boundaries, our language, our movements, they must all be monitored, I must bend over backwards to stop from hurting or arousing his feelings.�
Martin is a really endearing character and Howarth does an excellent job setting up the major life choice between Martin and a life with Susannah—or at least a life embracing her sexuality—by having Martin be a perfect choice on all fronts all except for her sexuality. He �is so kind and caring and offers a secure future,� her family approves, society approves, but she can never truly love him. Will she find that this element of love is more important than hiding behind a socially acceptable mask?
�These days all anyone wants to talk about is what is going to happen next, so much so that nobody cares about what’s happening now. All Susannah wants to do is run away, and all Martin wants to do is settle down, and I realise that I’ve only ever thought of ways to keep everyone happy, so I have no idea what I want�
This becomes the big lesson of the novel. �I can have her, she says, but it has to be all of her, and it has to be honest, and it has to be now,� yet can she walk away from the people of her life, from Crossmore, to embrace this? �We live with our eyes closed, Susannah and her money, Martin and his land, and me, without the confidence or ability to do anything on my own,� she thinks, and we see how she is often guided by a mother figure because of her inability to stand for herself. Though it is the mothers who hurt her the most, even Maria, the mother figure of her friend group, who will later betray Lucy’s secrets. �If you’d lose them over this, then maybe you never had them at all,� Susannah advises. A harsh truth, but a difficult one to embrace.
�There are so many people in the real world, Lucy. Not everybody is your mother. Not everybody wants to get married off and live on a farm. People would love you the way you are, we just need to find those people�
I could honestly go on about this novel for pages and pages. Sunburn is a towering achievement of queer fiction, of coming-of-age stories, of poetic expression, of just simply being a deeply moving novel. It captures so many specific feelings of riding the tide from childhood into adulthood as the maelstrom of desires, ego, and self-conscious investigations rains down. �Sweet Susannah, where I am a burnt-out star, you are the sun,� says Lucy, and here I sit looking at this novel as if it, too, is the sun. Startlingly gorgeous and nuanced, this is a masterpiece of a debut novel from Chloe Michelle Howarth. It will burn you in its brilliant blaze of passion, and you will be better for it.
5/5
�Susannah is the place where I belong. This is Heaven, this is all I want.�
July 21, 2024
There is a quiet beauty in meandering through someone’s mind while they meander through their life in a small town. Howarth utilizes this in Sunburn, as we follow Lucy as she falls for her friend, Susannah. Sweet, beautiful, wonderful, brilliant Susannah. Lucy says she could talk about Susannah forever, and I would gladly listen to her talk about Susannah forever. This book devastates the reader as we are pulled with Lucy between her need for external validation and love and her desire to be with Susannah: a desire that is not acceptable in this small Irish town in the 90’s. At the same time, this book fills you with a beautiful, pure love as we get the internal monologue of Lucy, which is almost always focused on her obsession with Susannah. While this took a bit longer to get through (and review lol) than both of us anticipated, it was an absolute joy to buddy read this with S. (whose brilliant review you can read here).
“Now is the time between birth and slaughter.�
With a first line as iconic as this, I knew that my copy of this book would be destroyed with my underlines and markups by the time it was all over; however, I did not expect to have pages that had a higher percentage of words underlined than not. Through the limited lens of Lucy’s obsessive one track mind we get some absolutely incredible lines � mainly about Susannah. Seriously, I think I would die on the spot if any woman said any of the things Lucy thought about Susannah.
We follow Lucy from fifteen to seventeen to twenty as she tries to navigate through her small town, Mother, childhood friends, and Susannah, one of her childhood friends whom she has begun to obsessively think about. While Lucy feels very similar at each age � aimlessly floating in the world, only knowing who she is in relation to everyone else � there are distinct, defining moments that come with each age.
“I understand these girls, I follow the pattern, it’s alright.�
Fifteen brings insecurity and the need to fit in with your friend group in a way that you are all indistinguishable from each other and a budding obsession with Susannah. Most of Lucy’s thoughts are about her friends � primarily worrying about fitting in and reflecting that all of them live very similar, lonely lives because they talk about shallow things then go back to homes that neglect them for whatever reason. I really love how the two things Howarth spends the most time on with the girls is Lucy’s irrepressible urge to be the same as them when she isn’t and the realization that maybe the others are pretending like she is. There is both a comfort and a loneliness in this dynamic as the girls fill their days surrounded by each other and are defined by each other, but they never talk about things that are deeper than surface level and all still go home lonely. The sweetness of a budding obsession starts to show in this, planting the seeds for later years.
“Even on school mornings when I am frozen to the bone and exhausted, being near her is always sunbathing in the garden.�
Despite all the negative things surrounding Lucy and Susannah, this is a really pure and beautiful depiction of first love. I really love how Howarth puts the focus on Lucy’s intense, poetic thoughts about her beloved instead of having their actual in person interactions be the focused. We primarily see Lucy and Susannah through Lucy’s thoughts and the letters they send to each other and because of that I had the absolute pleasure of reading some of the most beautiful strings of words I’ve ever seen. There is a scene in Chapter 2, when Lucy is 15 and doesn’t understand her own feelings yet, where they take Communion. It is my favorite part of the book and is probably the most marked up two pages of any book I’ve ever read with over half the words of the page being underlined. My girl really said ‘How was God going to see me as worthy of Communion, how was he going to see me at all, when she sparkled so beautifully beside me?� and didn’t recognize that she might have a teeny tiny crush on her friend. I love her.
“The Summer has been just a little bit too warm, the sun has been a little too bright. My thoughts have been a little bit too uncontrollable. And my emotions a little too humid. They only grow more humid. It all just gets stickier. Soon I think I will be unable to go even one day without lying on the grass with her.�
The summer when everything truly begins is so vivid that I could see it. While the first two years are filled with an unknowable yearning, the Summer Lucy and Susannah are seventeen is pure queer joy. Lucy worships Susannah in every season. The entire Earth worships Susannah in Summer. With Lucy’s newfound ability to worship Susannah more openly, the world does the same. The sun follows Susannah, keeping her bathed in its light. Everything is stronger and brighter in the Summer. Summer brings the start of this newfound boldness and sweet, quiet moments. Silly letters that stem from a desire to cheer Susannah up when her parents are being shitty turns into an emotional window into a budding new relationship as the seasons change. Even though they spend every day together in Summer, these letters are as constant as their company - exchanged every day. Summer marks a time where they can pretend the pressing issues of the outside world aren't real... or at least aren't pressing down on them and let's them just be two teenagers experiencing their first love.
"Save this letter: it marks the moment that my life finally started. I have never felt closer to Heaven than I felt today on the road with you. I can only hope that it was real, and that you will not change your mind."
It’s hard to talk about the beauty in these pages as we listen to Lucy talk about how wonderful Susannah is because anything I say cannot adequately explain how amazing the words Howarth has written are: her words are too good for my words. Lucy’s inner monologue is filled with some of the most poetic and loving and worshipping words I’ve ever seen written about another person. Their letters are intimate in a way that gives you glimpses of how Susannah worships Lucy in the exact same way she is worshipped by Lucy. It is exquisite and you have to read it for yourself.
“Let me be anything as long as I am your special secret ٳԲ.�
While Summer is a gentle reprieve from the pressure Lucy is under to get together with Martin, her best friend, we are thrown head first into conflict at Summer's end as Lucy can no longer ignore that she is being pulled in two wildly different directions: one she would be content with keeping secret forever and the other that she's been pressured to take her whole life. The internal conflict Lucy feels has one screaming at their book, begging for her to make the right decision.
“All I’ve done is fall for Susannah. It is not shameful or radical or wild. Anybody would fall for Susannah. I never meant to upset anybody.�
There is a heartbreakingly childlike quality to Lucy’s denial about why such a pure love will upset everyone in a way that is very similar to Jeanette in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Where in Oranges Jeanette begins to question the system and what it must mean for them to hate something that is nothing but pure, Lucy looks a bit more inwardly. She’s still not convinced that her love isn’t a sin, that she isn’t in the wrong and that she has no sense of self outside of other people makes it harder for her to truly accept that it is okay to be who she is. When she is with Susannah, she thinks, ‘They will all love me. How could they not love me, when there is nothing left of me but love?� but loses her confidence quick when she is confronted with someone like her mother who she knows deep down won’t love her anymore. She’s a bit delusional at times and it can be hard to see how it affects Susannah, who, through her own letters to Lucy, we start to get a better sense of.
“Why would we give anyone the chance to stop loving us? Why would I let them confirm my worst fear: that we are not a normal couple at all, but one strange sin spread across two people?�
Susannah presents as a very strong and sure force while Lucy doesn’t really know who she is. And while Susannah is ready to show the world who she is and be done with their small town, all Lucy wants is to hide away so that she can stay in her small town with her mother and friends who she’s known since childhood and doesn’t really want to give up. Lucy craves a normalcy that queer people in small towns are very rarely afforded, and it really does destroy her to have to choose either her life as she knows it or herself. I think it’s quite easy to judge Lucy for not “being brave enough� to be able to choose herself, but it is also quite easy to empathize with her. Howarth really excels at painting the inner turmoil of Lucy as all she wants in life is to be happy and normal but can’t be one without the other. It paints a painful picture of how hard it really is to give up everyone you love because they will not accept you for who you are. Maybe she isn’t brave, but that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be happy.
“One day, Mother will grow tired of me. This isn’t a worry or a guess, it is an instinct. Her affection will wane, and so I must absorb all the love she gives me while she is giving it.�
Lucy’s mother is one of the major sources of conditional love that she is scared to lose. While Lucy sees the best in her and defends her for the majority of the book, she is never delusional enough to think that her mother will accept her for who she is, even casually stating that she’d be sent to the nuns at the if she found out about her and Susannah. Her mother doesn’t hesitate to starve her literally and figuratively when she doesn’t follow he rules. By ignoring her instead of punishing her, Mother shows how truly disposable her daughter is to her and how little it affects her to just throw her out in the rain. I could go on about Lucy’s mother, but I know her so intimately that she just feels so small to me. She’s a hateful woman with total control over her daughter’s life because children will always crave the love of a parent. She’s not as big and important as she seems and Lucy has to learn that to move forward.
If you read this, pay attention to the quality of food that is served. Howarth uses food a lot to show how different types (or lack) of love are unsubstantial or unfulfilling to Lucy (and sometimes Susannah).
“I love the girls more than I love myself, but they would not love me If they knew. I know this, and deep down, Susannah must also know this.�
There is a point in the book where Lucy says that all she is doing is loving people and all she needs is the right kind of love back. The conditional love that Lucy has received her entire life makes her paranoid towards Susannah, but incapable of disappointing her family and friends. Why does she hang on to the things that she knows are hurting her? Why would anyone ask her to let go when she isn’t ready? The depth of Lucy and heartbreak of the situation is added with this dynamic. Lucy never questions whether or not she will be accepted in her circles if she comes out; there is an intrinsic knowledge that all young queer people surrounded by unsupportive people have, and it is very rarely wrong. People prove who they’re going to be through other actions long before they are confronted with a fact about you.
“He makes me feel like my blood is flowing in the wrong direction, he makes me aware that I am wrong.�
There were a few ways that Howarth could have handled Martin, Lucy’s best friend that everyone thinks she is destined to marry and I was on the edge of my seat, nervous every time he was in a scene because I had no idea how he would react to Lucy not liking him. While Martin is an obstacle in a sense, he’s an obstacle in the way that everyone has certain expectations for their relationship that comes with being friends with someone of the opposite sex in a small, conservative town. My heart broke a little for Martin when, after describing all the skies she saw with Susannah as peach-coloured, the sky was colorless and lifeless when she was with Martin. While the weight of expectation could be seen as crushing for Lucy, it was also a way out that she could take advantage of while hurting her best friend in the process. When ambivalence is the worst you feel about a relationship, it’s easier to put yourself in it if you know it will make the people you care about accept you. Martin was a sweet light in the darkness with his unconditional love for Lucy despite it all.
“Crossmore is as it always was: a wild and overgrown place where hearts swell and burst the most violently. We feel deeply here. No matter how far I go, I am soaked from the earth and dusted from the pollen, and I will always carry these deep feelings. So will Martin, so will Susannah, so will the others. And although we go far to escape them, at one time or another, we must return to Crossmore. To the roots of ourselves.�
In a podcast with Verve, Howarth brings up how the town of Crossmore acts as a fleshed-out character in Sunburn. We don’t really know who Lucy is because she is rooted in so many things � Susannah, Mother, Martin, the girls, Crossmore. Crossmore is an interesting place because of the way it feels like a living entity. In the beginning, Crossmore is a cruel, hard place for secrets, but as we move through the years Lucy begins to develop a certain love for Crossmore. Maybe it’s the deep-set knowledge that she will never be able to truly escape Crossmore; maybe it’s her love for Susannah enhancing the world around her, but she is pulled into the nature of Crossmore. Where the people are not so accepting, the land sings for Lucy and Susannah when they’re happy in love. She frequents the outskirts and the woods, carving her and Susannah’s names into the trees and claiming that they have a perfect place out by the wall. While she’s in love, her view of Crossmore is heightened too. There is a dread that comes with a small, unaccepting town, but there is also a love you can’t quite shake. It’s a weird dichotomy to read about that I suspect will hit home for a lot of people. Where she lives may be hurting her, but all she wanted was a simple life in Crossmore and now she has to worry about discovering herself and finding her own happiness, which may mean leaving Crossmore behind.
August 15, 2024
god damn the irish can fucking WRITE
July 6, 2024
im irish in another life
January 1, 2024
The ultimate gay Catholic yearning novel.
If Holy by King Princess and Take Me to Church by Hozier had a literary baby, this would be it.
If Holy by King Princess and Take Me to Church by Hozier had a literary baby, this would be it.
May 9, 2024
3.5 Stars
I'll be honest, I was a little bored through some of this story. I connected and was interested in the hidden/forbidden romance between Susannah and Lucy but I felt at times it dragged a little.
Towards the end though I really wanted to sob. For Susannah, for Lucy, for Martin.
As a whole, it's pretty emotional and heartbreaking.
'Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp.'
I'll be honest, I was a little bored through some of this story. I connected and was interested in the hidden/forbidden romance between Susannah and Lucy but I felt at times it dragged a little.
Towards the end though I really wanted to sob. For Susannah, for Lucy, for Martin.
As a whole, it's pretty emotional and heartbreaking.
'Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp.'
March 22, 2024
Bro it’s vampire empire by big thief
September 10, 2023
To be with her is a sin, to be without her is a tragedy
There are only a handful books outside my comfort zone that I dare myself to read every year. I was definitely not expecting a Charles� review to make me drop everything I was reading to start a historical fiction set in a small town in Ireland in the 90s. I was not expecting a debut’s writing to captivate me in a way very few authors had been able to. Although this is one of those hidden gems you find by chance, I have no doubts this author will someday be discovered worldwide.
Sunburn gives the raw picture of a girl who is starting to realize the gap between her and her friends; how she doesn’t care about boys yet she’s mesmerized by every daily action Susannah does. How she eats, how she moves, every single flaw that should make her less perfect but makes Lucy feel all hot inside. Although most of the book happens when Lucy is a teenager, the emotions are told from a mature POV, as if Lucy herself were narrating as an adult every single confusing thought that led her there. I adore how much I hated some characters, yet there wasn’t any real villain in the story. All of them were flawed people captive of their own traditions and beliefs.
All my life [my mum] has been my only role model, my greatest aspiration, but since I started to see her as a person beyond a parent, I have seen her as a grave misfortune, and now I cannot go back to the way I saw her before. Without all the mysticism of being my mother, she is just a woman, exactly like me, only with less time ahead of her () Maybe I’m just too immature, maybe I could be happy too. Really, I don’t even need to be happy, I just need to be the same as everybody else.
I was a thirteen when my mum caught my arm one day while I was heading to a swimming class and, in a serious voice I hadn’t heard before, said ‘Laura, you have to study, get a position so well-paid that, if someone has to give up their job to take care of the children, it won’t be you�. Then, she released me and left, as if the words that had left her mouth seconds ago never existed. I knew my mom, as a lot of mothers, had to sacrifice a lot to have me and my brother. But I never understood how much until that day. I’m sure I won’t be the only one feeling the pain when Lucy wondered if her mom would have been happier staying single, earning her own money, instead of erasing everything in her persona that wasn’t being a mother. But Lucy’s mom never caught her arm and encouraged her to study. Lucy’s mom still expected Lucy to follow her example, as if her own worth lied on seeing her only daughter dropping her dreams to continue the cycle.
If the book was told from Susannah’s POV, we would have wanted her to give up on Lucy. We would have hated the character who keeps refusing to compromise with someone as awesome as Susannah, who kept making choices that tried to make everyone around her happy while making her and Susannah miserable. But you are not following Susannah, you are following a girl who is too damn relatable to hate. A girl who still needs her mom’s love, and knows that she can’t have both her mom and Susannah. Who sees everything around her happening way too fast for her to catch up, who would need to suffer the pain first to understand the choices she had made may not have been the easier ones after all. I wished I was someone like Susannah, but I know every single decision Lucy made could have been my own.
It broke my heart how Susannah, Lucy and Martin ended up suffering because of the place they lived in. How Lucy kept using Martin to show people she was being the girl everyone wanted her to be, how Susannah kept dealing with her lover being with another person, how you couldn’t blame any of them. I hated what Lucy did to Martin, hated that deep down it was not her fault, but the society’s fault for wanting her to be something she was not.
Overall, Sunburn is a portrait of a queer teenager living in a rural town that wasn’t ready for someone like her. Of female friendship, mother-daughter relationships, the role expected from women and the restrictions people endure to keep old traditions alive. I would recommend it if you want something like Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, but adult instead of YA and with a writing that’s less lyrical but of matching quality.
Since I have known her, Susannah has been a flame in bloom. She took me from ash and made me human. I fear if she spends one more day in the garden, her flame will dwindle, and to ash I will return.
November 4, 2023
i didn’t realize “catholic� was a level of down bad
September 4, 2024
fully deserving of the hype. the writing is so good the story is all consuming and i really liked how the timeline seems to flip the typical trajectory of stories similar to this where you spend a lot more time with lucy during her adolescence rather than post-crossmore with a retrospective focus.
ultimately while reading this i felt like that video of the shrimp that gets a back massage and acupuncture before getting my head chopped off and thrown into a wok
ultimately while reading this i felt like that video of the shrimp that gets a back massage and acupuncture before getting my head chopped off and thrown into a wok
June 30, 2023
Rep: lesbian mc
CWs: lesbophobic slurs, period typical homophobia
Galley provided by publisher
Sunburn was, unfortunately, a book where my overriding feeling on finishing was just frustration. It could have been good, but ultimately it just did not work for me.
A lot of this came down to the writing style. Firstly, the one good thing I have to say about it was that it felt very teenage, quite melodramatic and overwrought. The book had an appropriate voice. However. It was also beset with short sentences and an overreliance on telling me every little thing. With the former, I just wanted to take out a red pen and let sentences run into each other, become clauses, I don’t know, just something longer. The latter, I fear, could not be resolved so easily. It sounds a trite complaint, to bring it back to “show don’t tell�, but I really really did want to be shown a few things instead of being told them. Especially when the telling became the whole damn book.
The second element of my frustration was the lack of character development for the main character throughout. We have a main character who’s a lesbian, but who is, since this is late 90s Ireland and her parents are unaccepting on that front, very very closeted. She spends a lot of the book trying to explain this to her secret girlfriend who wants to be more open � and here, I think, the girlfriend might have been more sympathetic to an extent � and then the kicker:
Yes, this is all through fear � and understandably so, given that the main character is fairly concerned with if people like/love her and her ma’s reaction � but I think part of what made this frustrating is that I didn’t feel that fear myself. Be it the writing, or whatever, but there was just a disconnect. We go back to just being told things � I was told time and again that she was scared of coming out to her family, but I never saw that fear. All I saw was her
This is what I mean by lack of character development. I’m not saying she had to suddenly undo 18 years of being in an unaccepting family, but there was a lot more that could have been done. Although, on reflection that would probably also require a rewriting of her entire character to an extent, since from the start she was always inclined to go along with the crowd. It was just annoying to constantly have her telling me that she didn’t like the guy like that
Maybe this was just a case of being the wrong person for the book. Surely the current rating and reviews of it attest to this. For me, though, it could have been good, but it didn’t live up to its potential.
August 19, 2024
Too late I realise that she has been the summer of my life. What a slow and painful death this shall be.
January 3, 2025
starting off 2025 with a book so good that I’ll be chasing this feeling for the rest of the year. My GOD
July 23, 2023
This book destroyed me, repaired me, wrung out my heart and left it to dry. I struggled to put it down - I felt all the pain of being trapped in a place you don't feel accepted, of wanting to be something else for everybody else, for desiring freedom but fearing leaving. Beautiful, makes me want to write!
July 28, 2024
I don’t even know where to start, it’s like I’ve been winded by this book! I really feel for Lucy, suffocated by Catholic guilt, a narrow-minded mother, and ultimately by her village Crossmore. This was a beautifully written book describing how confusing it can feel growing up, riddled with anxiety and the art of concealing your true self for the benefit of others.
February 20, 2023
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "Never in all my years of Christianity has there been talk of an angel like this." This book was the most beautiful I have ever read.
Set in the early 1990s in Crossmore, Ireland, Lucy is trying to stay on the beaten track. Her main expectation for life is that she will marry her best friend, Martin. However, this path of life seems less and less appealing to her as she grows into her later teenager years. As the summer heats up, Lucy begins to notice Susannah, one of the girls in her friendship group, in a way she would have never expected. She is fixated on the being that is Susannah, on what makes her unique, and becomes utterly infatuated. However, being raised in a tiny village, where everyone knows everything about everyone, it seems there is no place for these feelings Lucy holds for Susannah. Until the lines between friendship and a relationship begin to blur, and Lucy and Susannah fall for each other, despite all arrows in life pointing them away from each other. The book focuses on the first love between two young girls who simply shouldn't, the delicacy and intricacy between the bonds of mother and daughter, and what to do when the one thing you know is right, is wrong to everyone else.
The feelings that Lucy has at the start when he notices her awareness of other women in her life was nothing short of perfection. At the start there are discussions on how Lucy admires other girls, but brushes it off as what all girls do, we all look upwards to other girls we wish to be like. "This admiration is the natural order, I'm sure". It notes so beautifully the feeling between wanting to be someone, and actually wanting someone. This is such a thoughtful insight into the mind of a young teenager who its struggling with discovering who they are and where they fall in life. It was so beautiful and so well-written. One of the best moments of Lucy's realisation, in my opinion, is where she was listening to Susannah eating. My ears starting ringing it was so descriptive. Never have these feelings in adolescence been so well captured.
I think one of the most integral relations in the book is that between Lucy and her mother. "My perfect mother, my sweet and stinging honeybee." I think that really encapsulates everything you need to know about the writing and the maternal relations in this book. Lucy is under the guise that one day the relationship between her and her mother will wane and just wishes to hold on what love she can get for her while she can. This was possibly one of my favourite relationships in the whole book, as under the strict ways that are followed in this tiny village, Lucy's sexuality places her in a vulnerable position with regard to her mother.
I can't not mention Susannah. Their relationship was one of my favourite I have ever read about. The religious language whilst reading about the girls first love was truly a special read. These young girls know what they are supposed to be, yet they follow what they know feels right, society be damned. "I would drape my own soul over her body to protect her from eyes like mine". It's just incredible.
The plot of this book is very strong as not only do you get to see Lucy's relationship with other characters (Martin, friend-group from school, family) you get to see her grow up, and grow into her own skin in which as she becomes more comfortable, others begin to peel away on. I cannot fault this book, and I cannot criticise any of the characters decisions, for they were so young.
I recommend this book to anyone and everyone. It was incredibly beautiful so perfect if you're looking for a book regarding coming-of-age, and coming to know and understand your own sexuality, you simply must read it. Thank you netgalley for the arc! And thank you Chloe for such a beautiful book.
Set in the early 1990s in Crossmore, Ireland, Lucy is trying to stay on the beaten track. Her main expectation for life is that she will marry her best friend, Martin. However, this path of life seems less and less appealing to her as she grows into her later teenager years. As the summer heats up, Lucy begins to notice Susannah, one of the girls in her friendship group, in a way she would have never expected. She is fixated on the being that is Susannah, on what makes her unique, and becomes utterly infatuated. However, being raised in a tiny village, where everyone knows everything about everyone, it seems there is no place for these feelings Lucy holds for Susannah. Until the lines between friendship and a relationship begin to blur, and Lucy and Susannah fall for each other, despite all arrows in life pointing them away from each other. The book focuses on the first love between two young girls who simply shouldn't, the delicacy and intricacy between the bonds of mother and daughter, and what to do when the one thing you know is right, is wrong to everyone else.
The feelings that Lucy has at the start when he notices her awareness of other women in her life was nothing short of perfection. At the start there are discussions on how Lucy admires other girls, but brushes it off as what all girls do, we all look upwards to other girls we wish to be like. "This admiration is the natural order, I'm sure". It notes so beautifully the feeling between wanting to be someone, and actually wanting someone. This is such a thoughtful insight into the mind of a young teenager who its struggling with discovering who they are and where they fall in life. It was so beautiful and so well-written. One of the best moments of Lucy's realisation, in my opinion, is where she was listening to Susannah eating. My ears starting ringing it was so descriptive. Never have these feelings in adolescence been so well captured.
I think one of the most integral relations in the book is that between Lucy and her mother. "My perfect mother, my sweet and stinging honeybee." I think that really encapsulates everything you need to know about the writing and the maternal relations in this book. Lucy is under the guise that one day the relationship between her and her mother will wane and just wishes to hold on what love she can get for her while she can. This was possibly one of my favourite relationships in the whole book, as under the strict ways that are followed in this tiny village, Lucy's sexuality places her in a vulnerable position with regard to her mother.
I can't not mention Susannah. Their relationship was one of my favourite I have ever read about. The religious language whilst reading about the girls first love was truly a special read. These young girls know what they are supposed to be, yet they follow what they know feels right, society be damned. "I would drape my own soul over her body to protect her from eyes like mine". It's just incredible.
The plot of this book is very strong as not only do you get to see Lucy's relationship with other characters (Martin, friend-group from school, family) you get to see her grow up, and grow into her own skin in which as she becomes more comfortable, others begin to peel away on. I cannot fault this book, and I cannot criticise any of the characters decisions, for they were so young.
I recommend this book to anyone and everyone. It was incredibly beautiful so perfect if you're looking for a book regarding coming-of-age, and coming to know and understand your own sexuality, you simply must read it. Thank you netgalley for the arc! And thank you Chloe for such a beautiful book.
April 10, 2025
In the end, this was utterly gorgeous - but it took me a while to get there. It was mostly the inconsistency in language that threw me off. Most of the time quite bland and to the point, but broken up by sudden observations that felt too extravagant and dressed-up. It felt out of place rather than profound. But oh, the ache of yearning, the fracture between desire and devotion, the slow unraveling under the weight of Catholic guilt and duty. A heartbreak of a book.
Read
March 29, 2025Every word was like a slap to the face, every moment of sapphic yearning hit close to home.
Sunburn perfectly encapsulates the tough road to self-love after queer realisation, the long and winding journey it takes some people to come to themselves, to acceptance. I’ve genuinely never had a book make me feel such raw, visceral emotions and the fact that this is a debut novel? I’m actually scared for what Chloe Michelle Howarth could write next 📚🖋�
‘To be with her is a sin, to be without her is a tragedy�
Sunburn perfectly encapsulates the tough road to self-love after queer realisation, the long and winding journey it takes some people to come to themselves, to acceptance. I’ve genuinely never had a book make me feel such raw, visceral emotions and the fact that this is a debut novel? I’m actually scared for what Chloe Michelle Howarth could write next 📚🖋�
‘To be with her is a sin, to be without her is a tragedy�
March 1, 2024
"I live in a body that has loved her and I see with eyes that have witnessed her. She is part of my muscles, my tissue, she is unforgettable."
this honestly read more like a horror than a coming-of-age romance, which is to say: it was very successful. everything is so impossibly mundane, yet so complete an exploration of youth; howarth's writing is encapsulating. the love weaved into each page is so intense it's almost akin to grief. i hated each character and found myself fond of them, either way. lucy and susannah were complicated and selfish, and i'm so happy there is this queer love story that is real in all its beautiful and morbid ways.
August 20, 2023
this book hit too close to home. like WAY TOO CLOSE. bullet through my chest every time i turn the page.
i wish i could give this book 5000 stars because that’s what it deserves and at the same time i wish i had never read it becuase i don’t think i’ve ever felt this much and cried so many tears whilst reading a book.
“You are heaven made of flesh, you have been the greatest fire of my life. It’s not good enough, I know, but for every time I made you feel inadequate, I have died a hundred deaths. I’ll love you until the earth finishes.�
i wish i could give this book 5000 stars because that’s what it deserves and at the same time i wish i had never read it becuase i don’t think i’ve ever felt this much and cried so many tears whilst reading a book.
“You are heaven made of flesh, you have been the greatest fire of my life. It’s not good enough, I know, but for every time I made you feel inadequate, I have died a hundred deaths. I’ll love you until the earth finishes.�
February 11, 2024
normal people set in the 80s and gay what more could you want
August 26, 2024
What a read!! I am BLOWN AWAY 🌬�
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
~ One last summer book squeezed in, and this book definitely had those end of August vibes…and I think at this point it’s safe to say I am obsessed with reading Irish books; I just feel a much deeper connection with the writing style than I do in any other book ~
I have SO much to say about this book, but in a few words: ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC DEBUT!
I was totally blown away by this book and have so many feelings, it’s taken me a bit of processing to come to terms with everything that happened, especially in the last few chapters…it is also an incredibly difficult book to review without giving away the whole plot!
This was such an insightful and cleverly written book. It is a true testament to the author Chloe Howarth and she, without a doubt, deserves all the praise she has had since this book was published in June last year. She writes like the words just flow off her pen like water down a stream. She is magic ✍�
One key element that really stood out to me in this book were the FANTASTIC array of metaphors used. I don’t think I have ever read such pure and true depictions of such a multitude of situations and emotions.
This book is solely based on the POV of 17 year old Lucy who…’Recently, I have really wanted to figure out who I am. There must be more to me than being Martin Burke’s best friend or one of the girls or the Nolans� daughter. I’m just not sure what that is.� She is somewhat of an outsider from ‘the girls� and is fearful of rejection. She is the one that sits on the outside observing, which she clearly doesn’t mind; ‘It’s nice to watch them, and hear them, and feel I am one of them.� But, the story really begins when she starts to WANT MORE�
The ‘problem� Lucy has is that the conventional path that all those in this small Irish town follow doesn’t appeal to her. Living in Crossmore and the attitudes this rural village holds are KEY to the understanding of her constant battle. She doesn’t want to follow a path of marriage and motherhood. Furthermore, boys, both even her longstanding best friend Martin, don’t appeal to her. Instead she spends…‘A year wasted on watching her. The long light of March is so welcome, I must clean myself in it, I must move on from this. Am I wrong to notice all the things that set her apart from the rest of us? She is better, nicer, prettier, just miles ahead. There’s no trespass, it’s just a year of watching, and observing, and waiting for the next thing that will make me crumble. There are times when it becomes so much that I can’t stand to be around her. But there is something in her attitude that I am drawn to.�
She is totally entranced beyond her own imagination. The passion and power of her first love is indescribable, yet somewhat infectious. There is also a longstanding internal dialogue running throughout the course of the book which I found to be a fascinating insight into Lucy’s true and raw thoughts and emotions. And the language Chloe uses is absolutely beautiful and descriptions that are so crystal clear.
Overtime, as Lucy and Susannah develop their relationship. She seems to develop a double life. In one sense she is completely overwhelmed by her life with Susannah…‘It started a few weeks ago in her garden, a few innocent hours of sunbathing, which has mutated into me offering her every free minute that I have�. However, she is torn because…‘Right now it seems as though I only have two options: either I can be who Mother expects me to be, or I can be whoever I want to be. Each seems as treacherous as the other.�
As the years slowly pass by, Lucy is torn between two people and two possible future lives…which will she choose and will it work out in her favour? Only time will tell�
‘To be with her is a sin, to be without her is a tragedy�
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this story. It is a deep portrayal of love and was actually really sad in parts; I really felt for Lucy and was saddened by the fact she felt that she couldn’t be her true self. I also really appreciated the format of letters Chloe chose to use, especially more and more as the pace gathered towards the end of the book. It definitely helped to build up suspense and I was DYING to know how their lives turned out. I hadn’t released until this point how invested I had become in these characters.
And finally, I will leave you with one last beautiful quote:
‘There is no guilt, no fear. I don’t care if anybody sees me here, looking for the love of my life. I want to be seen here. I want the world to see me with her. I want them all to see me setting myself free.�
🥵🥵🥵
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
~ One last summer book squeezed in, and this book definitely had those end of August vibes…and I think at this point it’s safe to say I am obsessed with reading Irish books; I just feel a much deeper connection with the writing style than I do in any other book ~
I have SO much to say about this book, but in a few words: ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC DEBUT!
I was totally blown away by this book and have so many feelings, it’s taken me a bit of processing to come to terms with everything that happened, especially in the last few chapters…it is also an incredibly difficult book to review without giving away the whole plot!
This was such an insightful and cleverly written book. It is a true testament to the author Chloe Howarth and she, without a doubt, deserves all the praise she has had since this book was published in June last year. She writes like the words just flow off her pen like water down a stream. She is magic ✍�
One key element that really stood out to me in this book were the FANTASTIC array of metaphors used. I don’t think I have ever read such pure and true depictions of such a multitude of situations and emotions.
This book is solely based on the POV of 17 year old Lucy who…’Recently, I have really wanted to figure out who I am. There must be more to me than being Martin Burke’s best friend or one of the girls or the Nolans� daughter. I’m just not sure what that is.� She is somewhat of an outsider from ‘the girls� and is fearful of rejection. She is the one that sits on the outside observing, which she clearly doesn’t mind; ‘It’s nice to watch them, and hear them, and feel I am one of them.� But, the story really begins when she starts to WANT MORE�
The ‘problem� Lucy has is that the conventional path that all those in this small Irish town follow doesn’t appeal to her. Living in Crossmore and the attitudes this rural village holds are KEY to the understanding of her constant battle. She doesn’t want to follow a path of marriage and motherhood. Furthermore, boys, both even her longstanding best friend Martin, don’t appeal to her. Instead she spends…‘A year wasted on watching her. The long light of March is so welcome, I must clean myself in it, I must move on from this. Am I wrong to notice all the things that set her apart from the rest of us? She is better, nicer, prettier, just miles ahead. There’s no trespass, it’s just a year of watching, and observing, and waiting for the next thing that will make me crumble. There are times when it becomes so much that I can’t stand to be around her. But there is something in her attitude that I am drawn to.�
She is totally entranced beyond her own imagination. The passion and power of her first love is indescribable, yet somewhat infectious. There is also a longstanding internal dialogue running throughout the course of the book which I found to be a fascinating insight into Lucy’s true and raw thoughts and emotions. And the language Chloe uses is absolutely beautiful and descriptions that are so crystal clear.
Overtime, as Lucy and Susannah develop their relationship. She seems to develop a double life. In one sense she is completely overwhelmed by her life with Susannah…‘It started a few weeks ago in her garden, a few innocent hours of sunbathing, which has mutated into me offering her every free minute that I have�. However, she is torn because…‘Right now it seems as though I only have two options: either I can be who Mother expects me to be, or I can be whoever I want to be. Each seems as treacherous as the other.�
As the years slowly pass by, Lucy is torn between two people and two possible future lives…which will she choose and will it work out in her favour? Only time will tell�
‘To be with her is a sin, to be without her is a tragedy�
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this story. It is a deep portrayal of love and was actually really sad in parts; I really felt for Lucy and was saddened by the fact she felt that she couldn’t be her true self. I also really appreciated the format of letters Chloe chose to use, especially more and more as the pace gathered towards the end of the book. It definitely helped to build up suspense and I was DYING to know how their lives turned out. I hadn’t released until this point how invested I had become in these characters.
And finally, I will leave you with one last beautiful quote:
‘There is no guilt, no fear. I don’t care if anybody sees me here, looking for the love of my life. I want to be seen here. I want the world to see me with her. I want them all to see me setting myself free.�
🥵🥵🥵
November 23, 2023
She took her eucharist before me, and I quietly apologised to Jesus for the downgrade from her tongue to mine.
Her hair is fire against the foxgloves, and the last of the summer sunlight is sacrificing itself to fall on her. The wind slows till it is less than a breath. How calm the air can be; look at how she smoulders.
I seriously thought about a review just composed of passages from this book. This book that sat heavy on my chest and on my mind waiting for the worst�.until I had to put it down, and just as quickly picked it back up again.
So, I imagined that if the Bronte sisters were writing now and one of them decided to write a book about two girls in 1990’s Ireland, who lived in a small village with one girls’s family having a strict catholic upbringing and the other girl being essentially abandoned by each family member in succession, and the book had the most absolutely beautiful prose, yet it was still written in a gothic tradition of pain and virtue then, it might turn out like this book.
Lucy the poor girl and Susannah the beauitiful well to do girl have been friends all their lives . Lucy’s best friend is Martin, the boy down the lane and the one that everyone, parents and friends, think belongs with her. We see Lucy’s crush on Susannah grow over the summer of their senior year and in a lovely slow burn, we realize that Lucy’s isn’t the only crush
She looks at me now like I am a thing that she wants, a thing worth having. I have been a wanted thing before, many times � it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t want the person back. Before her, I was only ever preyed upon. Now I feel I am worshipped.
Because this is classical victorian/gothic writing disguised as a romance novel, of course something awful happens. (the spoiler talks about the result not the incident..)
Lucy doesn’t have a lot of choices. Neither does Susannah and I think the lack of choices available to the two main characters who live in this stark unforgiving and intolerant atmosphere is part of what the author wants us to see that circumstances both physical and societal rob us of our choices.
Seeing all of this drama play out against the backdrop of 1994 Ireland makes the contrasts much more black & white. Lucy & Susannah have to keep their secret because the location won’t allow it, and yet with this prose being so wonderful to read and seeing how it embellishes their love relationship it makes the pain they experience that much harder to bare, and yet they both are able to see their joy and their heartache.
This book will stay with you. You will think about it while you read it, and you will think about it after you finish it.
October 26, 2023
'This Summer has been just a little too warm, the sun has been a little too bright. My thoughts have been a little bit too uncontrollable. And my emotions a little too humid. They only grow more humid. It all just gets stickier. Soon I think I will be unable to go even one day without lying on the grass with her.'
I originally rated this four stars, and honestly, most of this book was. But with a little distance, despite the very touching and affecting prose, the overall structural issue feels harder to reconcile.
My issue is with balance. The novel takes place mostly in the final year of high school in a small, conservative village in Ireland in the 1990s. The narrator Susannah's feelings for her best friend become overwhelming, as do the expectations placed upon her by everyone. The ending, however, takes place four years later.
I've seen this described as a queer (Irish writers will never escape the Sally Rooney comparisons I fear) and in ways it is; emotional repression, class divide, classic Irish disillusionment. But it lacks that quintessential meditative retrospection that well-executed time jumps allow. Here, the time jump feels added for convenience, jam-packed with sudden character development and climax, and allows for everything to be tied up neatly.
This clean sweeping up of the tangled and complicated mess that is the character's life was a jolting divergence from what felt like a very literary coming-of-age. There is little time spent on who she is now as an adult, or exploration into the characters she has surrounded herself with: an incredibly interesting group of queer women who've migrated towards one another in 90s Dublin. Like???
I guess I felt a little incredulous at the ending. Perhaps I am projecting and bitter BUT how often does that pivotal queer experience, that sexual awakening, really work out? To me, the potential, the realisation, is not only more realistic than any grand romantic conclusion but more interesting. It's why that final image from the Call Me By Your Name film is so powerful, Elio is left to simply feel and be, changed by what he has experienced. It never feels as though Susannah has that moment, or at least not that we witness.
I genuinely loved the first 70% of this, but it began to drag and then falter. I still recommend it if you're after that queer coming-of-age but as a lover of this particular niche, I must critique honestly. I definitely will read whatever this author writes next.
I originally rated this four stars, and honestly, most of this book was. But with a little distance, despite the very touching and affecting prose, the overall structural issue feels harder to reconcile.
My issue is with balance. The novel takes place mostly in the final year of high school in a small, conservative village in Ireland in the 1990s. The narrator Susannah's feelings for her best friend become overwhelming, as do the expectations placed upon her by everyone. The ending, however, takes place four years later.
I've seen this described as a queer (Irish writers will never escape the Sally Rooney comparisons I fear) and in ways it is; emotional repression, class divide, classic Irish disillusionment. But it lacks that quintessential meditative retrospection that well-executed time jumps allow. Here, the time jump feels added for convenience, jam-packed with sudden character development and climax, and allows for everything to be tied up neatly.
This clean sweeping up of the tangled and complicated mess that is the character's life was a jolting divergence from what felt like a very literary coming-of-age. There is little time spent on who she is now as an adult, or exploration into the characters she has surrounded herself with: an incredibly interesting group of queer women who've migrated towards one another in 90s Dublin. Like???
I guess I felt a little incredulous at the ending. Perhaps I am projecting and bitter BUT how often does that pivotal queer experience, that sexual awakening, really work out? To me, the potential, the realisation, is not only more realistic than any grand romantic conclusion but more interesting. It's why that final image from the Call Me By Your Name film is so powerful, Elio is left to simply feel and be, changed by what he has experienced. It never feels as though Susannah has that moment, or at least not that we witness.
I genuinely loved the first 70% of this, but it began to drag and then falter. I still recommend it if you're after that queer coming-of-age but as a lover of this particular niche, I must critique honestly. I definitely will read whatever this author writes next.
November 21, 2024
God, I loved this book. It’s not like it’s such a great book. It is and it isn’t. It’s not quite moored in time; some important side characters are a bit sketchy; the prose tends to excess; I’m not sure if I’m entirely convinced of its reality, even. But God in heaven, what a waste of time this enumerating of flaws is, because it is sublime, it is sublimity itself.
Lucy’s feelings distort her sense of what is possible and impossible, leaving the story she tells and all its possible endings shimmering in and out of existence. She cannot even tell the difference between hard-won truth and complete self-delusion. And yet, through the distorting haze of Lucy’s obsessions, Susannah comes into focus, then Martin. The novel seems to be narrated from many points in time at once: the immediate time of the story, another moving point floating somewhere ahead of the story, some third time even further in the future, when things have come into some kind of perspective, or not.
“I am all wounds, Susannah, and you are the loveliest pus. Flooding in to heal me. Yellow as the sun� (69).
Baroque is in, these days. The measured, elegant prose of the 20th century has long since given way to the glories of untrammeled nature and metaphor. Authenticity is out, artifice is in, and if we haven't quite abandoned the notion that people in novels should talk the way people talk, we have mostly let go of the notion that they should think the way people think. I embrace the change. Long have I worshiped at the altar of the semicolon! Still, there is something uncanny about a 17-year-old, first person narrator saying something like: “More and more, I think that sex may not be the sacred union that I once imagined it to be. Rather, it seems to be a secular thing: condensation on a car window, squeaking skin on rainsoaked bales, a wonderful disgrace� (40). This is not how people think. Like Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights, Lucy inhabits a liminal space between character and narrator. And yet—the use of symbolic language, of natural imagery, of luxurious description, to heighten and exaggerate emotional truth—this was the great trick of the Romantics, the Victorians, the Symbolists, the Surrealists, the entire first century of queer literature, and also every poet who ever lived until sometime in the first half of the twentieth century when what had seemed the boundless promise of modernity turned into a waking nightmare and shattered every art form that existed and left the world’s poets on a hapless quest to speak plainly, as if it weren’t their entire job to do the opposite.
This book knows exactly what it is like to fall madly in love at 17, emphasis on the madly. It is entirely honest to the morbid hormonal lust of the introspective teen. At the same time, it is perfectly happy to abandon its own narrative voice in service of some wise or foolish observation. Its inconstancy is maddening, and I loved it. I don’t know or care if Sunburn is good or great. I would not want it to be a word different.
“And although I want to say something to make this better, all I can do is stare at her reflection in the long mirror. There is her acne, exposed, a litter of spots clinging to her jaw. Susannah, I would be a yellow spot on your jaw, I would be a moth in the wardrobe or a stain on your clothes, let me be anything as long as I am your special, secret thing. I haven’t changed at all. Even after everything, I am just a subordinate friend who is obsessed with her. This is not what she wants to hear� (220).
Lucy’s feelings distort her sense of what is possible and impossible, leaving the story she tells and all its possible endings shimmering in and out of existence. She cannot even tell the difference between hard-won truth and complete self-delusion. And yet, through the distorting haze of Lucy’s obsessions, Susannah comes into focus, then Martin. The novel seems to be narrated from many points in time at once: the immediate time of the story, another moving point floating somewhere ahead of the story, some third time even further in the future, when things have come into some kind of perspective, or not.
“I am all wounds, Susannah, and you are the loveliest pus. Flooding in to heal me. Yellow as the sun� (69).
Baroque is in, these days. The measured, elegant prose of the 20th century has long since given way to the glories of untrammeled nature and metaphor. Authenticity is out, artifice is in, and if we haven't quite abandoned the notion that people in novels should talk the way people talk, we have mostly let go of the notion that they should think the way people think. I embrace the change. Long have I worshiped at the altar of the semicolon! Still, there is something uncanny about a 17-year-old, first person narrator saying something like: “More and more, I think that sex may not be the sacred union that I once imagined it to be. Rather, it seems to be a secular thing: condensation on a car window, squeaking skin on rainsoaked bales, a wonderful disgrace� (40). This is not how people think. Like Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights, Lucy inhabits a liminal space between character and narrator. And yet—the use of symbolic language, of natural imagery, of luxurious description, to heighten and exaggerate emotional truth—this was the great trick of the Romantics, the Victorians, the Symbolists, the Surrealists, the entire first century of queer literature, and also every poet who ever lived until sometime in the first half of the twentieth century when what had seemed the boundless promise of modernity turned into a waking nightmare and shattered every art form that existed and left the world’s poets on a hapless quest to speak plainly, as if it weren’t their entire job to do the opposite.
This book knows exactly what it is like to fall madly in love at 17, emphasis on the madly. It is entirely honest to the morbid hormonal lust of the introspective teen. At the same time, it is perfectly happy to abandon its own narrative voice in service of some wise or foolish observation. Its inconstancy is maddening, and I loved it. I don’t know or care if Sunburn is good or great. I would not want it to be a word different.
“And although I want to say something to make this better, all I can do is stare at her reflection in the long mirror. There is her acne, exposed, a litter of spots clinging to her jaw. Susannah, I would be a yellow spot on your jaw, I would be a moth in the wardrobe or a stain on your clothes, let me be anything as long as I am your special, secret thing. I haven’t changed at all. Even after everything, I am just a subordinate friend who is obsessed with her. This is not what she wants to hear� (220).
March 13, 2025
� expecting a formal letter of thanks and a party from my city after I sent 13 requests from two different library accounts for them to acquire this book into their catalogue. you're welcome freaks !!!! the writing was absolutely incredible, I simply am not doing crushes the way Lucy is because I left this book half obsessed w/ susannah too. yearning was invented in 1992 in Crossmore, Ireland apparently. no one is doing a bildungsroman novel the way the Irish are.
September 17, 2024
Are you kidding me right now. I’ve NEVER felt so much from a book. I want to reread it already, digest these behaviors and thoughts, try to piece together a puzzle or solve this equation that gives an answer that makes me feel euphoric. Every other passage left me winded with absolutely beautiful prose filled with desperate longing and pain. I will never let go of this book and the way it made me feel. I’m not a book seller but you’ll see me at your local B&N, AGGRESSIVELY slamming it into your hands.
PS: “I don’t have time for him bc I am too busy kneeling at the altar of her navel.� That is hot as hell😮💨🧎♀️➡�
PS: “I don’t have time for him bc I am too busy kneeling at the altar of her navel.� That is hot as hell😮💨🧎♀️➡�
May 20, 2024
just listen to good luck babe
Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,351 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.