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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: (view spoiler)[she fakes a relationship with a man. Initially, just as a one date thing, but for the second half of the book, at least, she’s just sleepwalking into a long-term relationship with him, all the while trying to tell her girlfriend she just needs to convince her ma that she’s straight. (hide spoiler)]

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 (view spoiler)[to walking in on the main character and her girlfriend was to blank her to the point of not even making food for her (hide spoiler)] � 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 (view spoiler)[sleepwalking into a relationship with a boy who genuinely loved her, and doing nothing to make it work besides. Even until the end, she would have been happy to remain in the state she was, if he hadn’t found letters she was exchanging with her (now ex-) secret girlfriend. (hide spoiler)]

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 (view spoiler)[only to turn around and use him to act out heterosexuality, while still complaining she didn’t really like him. Well, sorry that I lack some sympathy here, but you don’t have to keep using him! She said at the start it would just be one date, to get her ma off her back � it turned into three whole years. They moved away from their village! They lived together! He was going to propose! This felt less like fear and more like sheer inertia. Because of this, the final chapter set two months later where she is more comfortable with her sexuality felt unearned (and, besides, we saw nothing of the development on page). (hide spoiler)]

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.