Sunshine

Robin McKinley

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

Rae, nicknamed Sunshine by her stepfather, is the baker at her family's coffeehouse. She's happy getting up at 4 am to make cinnamon rolls for the breakfast rush, and dealing with people and food all day. But one evening she needed somewhere she could be alone for a little while.

There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it's unwise to walk. But the lake had been quiet for years. She never heard them coming. Of course you don't, when they're vampires.

They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to the wall of an abandoned mansion - within easy reach of her fellow prisoner.

She knows he is a vampire. She knows that she's to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet when dawn breaks, she is still alive. And now he needs her to help him survive the days...

They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to the wall of an abandoned mansion - within easy reach of her fellow prisoner.

She knows he is a vampire. She knows that she's to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet when dawn breaks, she is still alive. And now he needs her to help him survive the day...

'Sunshine is a gripping, funny, page-turning, pretty much perfect work of magical literature that exists more or less at the unlikely crossroads of Chocolat, Interview with the Vampire, Misery, and the tale of Beauty and the Beast.'

'Takes away everything we have always known about the menacing eroticism of pale men with sharp teeth, and throws it up into the air....This is a book about growing up and making peace with the world around you, and it is excellent.'

Review by Chrissi (280217) Rating (8/10)

Review by Chrissi
Book Source: Purchased
Rating 8/10
Sunshine is a person, she has another name, Rae, but everyone calls her Sunshine. She is a baker working in a family run café in a part of a city which is not rough, but on that border of being reclaimed from roughness.

One night she takes a drive out to a lake where she used to see her grandmother. Apparently the lake is a place which used to have some bad things happen. You know where this is going, right?

She is taken by vampires to a house and chained up in a room with a vampire who also appears to be chained. She is obviously meant to be eaten or drunk by him. The long and the short is that it does not happen like that else it might have been a very short book.

This book feels like it is the start of a series. Apparently the author is asked this all the time, and never meant for it to be so fair play to them for resisting the temptation. When I say it feels like a beginning, the whole vampiric romance thing is a bit of a non-starter, but the objective that they came together to do was achieved, so maybe it was complete in itself. For some reason it feels a little like Kim Harrison’s series only Sunshine is a little more of a victim than Rachel.

I liked the premise and the world that was created and maybe it is a world with potential for exploring, not the relationship between Constantine and Sunshine. There is magic and vampires and were-things (is there a were-chicken? How annoyed would you be if you found yourself all were-y and found that you were packing some pretty ugly feet and a hardened nose which made you only a danger to corn on the cob?) and I sound a bit confused, don’t I? I liked the book and I suppose the old adage leave ‘em wanting more is apt here, but if the author chose to revisit this creation then I would be up for it.
Chrissi (28th February 2017)