In the early 1990s, in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out place. 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 who is in love with her. Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer when a spark with schoolfriend Savannah blooms into an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love. Fearful of rejection from her small, conversative 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. Which one will she choose?
Sunburn is exceptional. Chloe Michelle Howarth’s prose is breathtakingly impressive. I don’t know how anyone can write like this, especially for a debut. Her characters are fleshed out and real. Their personalities are strong and their actions and inactions are heavily informed by their fears, desires, and circumstances. I could read this book forever, follow Lucy and Susannah throughout the entirety of their lives, read how their teenaged love continues to shape them. The letters they write to each other throughout are beautiful, full of love, desire, pain, yearning, and longing, The descriptions of love, heartbreak, confusion, growing up, of world beginning and world ending are so striking. Howarth explores so many important themes, including first love, adolescent anxiety, the harsh realities of growing up, small towns, and traditions/expectations, which all feel remarkably authentic. The entire book has me spellbound and broken and put back together again, but I’ll never be quite the same. And neither will Lucy and Savannah. This is a must-read.
★★★★★
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