Sunburn is a fairly entertaining, fairly well written novel full of the angst of stereotypical teenagers navigating the journey into early adulthood. Arguably, this novel might be better suited to those with similar experiences and who are, therefore, able to relate. Readers who grew up in different circumstances might find some of the characters' worries and preoccupations a tad absurd.

I love novels set in Ireland (both Northern and the Republic) which was one of the reasons I was drawn to Sunburn. Sadly, its location is entirely incidental to the story. Apart from occasional references about going to Mass and confessing to minor 'sins', Sunburn could be set in any small community in the UK or even America. If the author had made more of the novel's interesting location, I believe it could have added a richness to the narrative that would have made it a more satisfying and engaging read overall.

Many thanks to Chloe Michelle Howarth, the publishers and to Netgalley for the ARC.

3.5 ⭐️

This coming of age story really captured me. I fell in live from the start, sinking into the ordinary lives of these teens and reminiscing about my own teenage years. I also enjoyed seeing how feeling sprouted, and the romance began to bloom.

I do feel like there were bits during the last third of the book that dragged a bit for me and my interest dwindles a bit.

Overall, enjoyed the writing, loved that we were in the early 90s, love that it takes place in Ireland, and also deals with some serious topics along the way.

"𝘛𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘪𝘯, 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘥𝘺."
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This is so much more than your average coming of age novel. I am lost for words after finishing it so I'll try my best with this review.
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First of all, I can't believe this is a debut?! Chloe's writing all the way through is almost poetic and so addicting, I didn't want to put it down. My favourite thing is how it's written in first person from Lucy's POV— several parts felt like she was talking directly to the reader and this made the general story all the more heart wrenching but so good to read. I honestly don't think it would have worked as well had it been written any other way.
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The way we were led through Lucy's journey of self-discovery throughout her teenagehood was devastating and exhilarating all at the same time. Her early feelings of knowing she's different to the people she's grown up with was all too familiar; add to that being surrounded by religion and a fractured mother/daughter relationship, it makes for a crushing but necessary read.
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As well as the main love story, I loved how the difficulties surrounding female friendships were highlighted.
"𝘚𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮."
Some parts felt harsh to read but it was easy to be reminded of Lucy's young age and she was able to be excused, I found myself empathising with her a lot of the time.
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Overall, this was an amazingly written and sensitive portrayal of queer first love, teenage anxieties and growing into a young adult all while feeling out of place in an area you're slowly but surely outgrowing.
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There are so many more thoughts I wish I could put into words about this novel but I think it's one of those that you will have to read for yourself to really get it.
I can definitely see why this has been selected as 'one to watch in 2023'— I'm not exaggerating when I say this is without a doubt one of my favourite books I've read so far this year.

Thanks to Netgalley, Chloe Michelle Howarth & Verve Books for the digital arc in exchange for an honest review!

1990's Ireland and we follow Lucy as she experiences first love, and all that comes with it.

This book was beautifully written, poetic, delicious - but there were some times when I felt it dragged a little and not a lot really happened. I also found that, because Lucy's thoughts were so jumbled, it left me a little unsure of how to feel about a character or event. On the one hand this was clever, as it mirrored her own confusion, but at times I found it really disorientating and a little hard to follow.

The plot was so realistic, right down to the dramas of teenage friendships and there was certainly nothing 2D about any of the plot or characters. There were levels that we never even got close to exploring.

It really was a lovely book, I did find it a bit of a slog at points and the last few chapters felt as though they were in a very different style.

I love a self awareness in a protagonist and this book has it in spades.
I really recommend to everyone. With thanks to the publishers and author for allowing me to read this book before publication
Can’t wait to read more from this author

Howarth almost perfectly distills the anxiety and self-loathing that young queer people experience when growing up in a community they know will reject their true identity. Lucy is such an interesting character because she's so blatant with the reader about her attraction to Susannah, that her fear of their relationship being known by others creates a dichotomy that heads naturally, sadly, into her double life as a young adult.

The internal dialogue is impeccable: despite the heartbreak she feels through most of the novel, Lucy is witty, cynical, self-deprecating, and a little bit sassy. I really vibe with her level of self-awareness and acknowledgement of the hurt she causes trying to avoid her own pain. Definitely would recommend!

Wow what a read!… I was up all night reading this…
Thanks netgalley for sending me this copy. I really enjoy

Have you ever felt out of place, unsure of your path in life, and willing to risk everything for a chance at true happiness? Chloe Michelle Howarth's "Sunburn" will take you on the journey of one young woman's self-discovery and her heart-wrenching choice between the intensity of true love, and the safety of conventionality.

This novel centres around Lucy, a young woman who feels out of place in the small Irish village she lives in. She thinks everything is already set and decided for her - she'll grow up and marry her best friend Martin, despite not having any feelings for him, and they'll live off of his family's farm. Until, during the summer, a spark ignites between Lucy and her friend Susannah and that spark quickly ignites into an all-consuming love affair.

I truly don't think I have enough words to describe how incredible this book is. The way Howarth captured Lucy's slow realisation of her feelings for Susannah in the beginning is incredible. Seeing their relationship blossom was beautiful - the chemistry between them was literally palpable on the page. Like "I would drape my own soul over her body to protect her from eyes like mine" are you kidding me?????

The prose in this book is some of the best I've ever read - it's lyrical and evocative. Every page is so full of rich descriptions that make you feel like you are there with the characters.

I cannot believe this is a debut. I am so excited to read Howarth's future works because this was beyond incredible. Highly recommend to anyone looking for an LGBT coming-of-age story - this is the one.

A wonderful sapphic coming of age/ romance set in a rural Irish village in the early 90's. It follows a young girl, Lucy, as she contemplates whether she should follow the life that her family has planned for her, marrying her friend Martin and being a mother, or if she should go against what is expected of her and let herself fall for her friend, susannah. But it's so much more than that, it's about love, pressure, stigma, family, friendship, growing up and making a life for yourself while also not knowing who you are, what you want or who you want to be.

It has beautiful, poetic writing and one of the best first pages I've ever read. I'm not usually one for romance type books but this was wonderful and beautiful and one I'll be thinking about and recommending for a while

This stunning, heart-warming, powerful novel tells the story of Lucy, a young woman in 1990s Ireland, who falls in love with someone she can't be with. Susannah is the light of Lucy's life, the sun to her moon, and yet Lucy is forced to deny their love, by her family, her community, tradition, fear and prejudice.

'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.'

Chloe Michelle Howarth perfectly encapsulates what it is to fall in love, and how our boundaries can only be broken if we are brave enough to break them down.

‘Sunburn’ really appealed to me because it is hyper focused on those formative teen summers where every drama is heightened and every emotion feels endless. There is just something so atmospheric and evocative in Howarth’s novel that I really was drawn in from the first chapter.
Lucy lives in 1990’s Ireland where there is an expected path for girls to follow and she feels intensely out of place everywhere except when she is with Susannah. There are so many coming-of-age tropes within this story but it all still feels fresh and devastating in the best way. I loved the way Howarth portrays Lucy’s internal struggle from the beginning to the end of the novel but it never feels exhaustive or laboured:She sculpts the tale across a span of extended time but the flow still felt easy to read and kept me turning the pages.
Lucy and Susannah’s relationship was so enigmatic and captures the intensity of first love whilst also feeling subtle and nuanced in the pain and heartbreak that ultimately comes from such chemistry. Overall this was an incredibly strong storyline but because it is written with such aching longing that falls off of the page it is easily one of my favourite reads for this year. Loved it.

ultimately, about the insane experiences of being a girl and experiencing girlhood. this encapsulates girl love, mother daughter relationships, girl envy, girl cliques, and girl everything,

the writing was great and i especially enjoyed the religious language used. i love the way certain experiences were rendered in a soft light while others in a harsh light. i like the atmosphere of the novel and i cannot wait for everybody to read this and experience what it is like to be a girl.

Well that was an absolutely devastating read…

It’s rural Ireland in the early 90s, and Lucy is reaching that fateful period of adolescence where everything changes - friendship groups are becoming brittle, gazes are turned towards the boys, and the end of school is tantalisingly close.

Over the course of a hot, dusty summer, she finds herself torn between her solid respectable best friend, Martin, who has loved Lucy his whole life, and the beautiful, dangerous Susannah, who stirs up feelings that threaten everything Lucy’s religious and conservative upbringing has taught her.

It’s sweet and soul-crushing, slamming you right back to the feverish crushes and hidden secrets of your teenage years, and then proceeds to slowly break your heart into achingly small pieces.

Sunburn is a classic queer coming of age story, but with the added bonus of 90s nostalgia and the gentle tragedy of small-town adolescence. It’s beautifully written and you should absolutely add it to your TBR when it comes out in June ‘23.

this was such a fantastic debut. i really enjoyed reading this book and loved following the story of lucy. watching her go from having her life with martin planned to her first interaction with susannah and their relationship together was heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time.

this novel deals with the importance of relationships and how delicate they can be - especially a mother and daughter relationship. i cried many times when seeing the relationship that lucy had with her mother - it was so heartbreaking and i truly hated her mother.

my heart really goes out for lucy; she has to make some horribly painful decisions over her life. she wanted to fit in and be the person that others wanted her to be rather than who she wanted to be. i loved seeing her grow and feel more and more comfortable with herself and her identity.

this book was written beautifully. thank you so much for writing this book. it was so heartbreaking and endearing.

📚 BOOK REVIEW 📚
I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth courtesy of @netgalley. I was thrilled to get to read this as I do love a coming of age story, and the Evening Standard have named it as ‘one to watch in 2023’.
Set in the early 1990s, in a small Irish village where everyone knows everyone else’s business, and the Church is a huge part of people’s lives, Lucy is a teenager with her future mapped out for her. Only, Lucy feels different, and the thoughts of becoming the doting housewife to her best friend, Martin, that everyone assumes for her, does not hold any joy at all.
Instead, we see Lucy’s self proclaimed ‘admiration’ for her friend Susannah unfold, and we journey with her as she realises that her feelings are more than fondness for her friend: we see her fall in love, lust and feel the overwhelm, self absorption and anxiety that can come with that. Add in that she is discovering who she is, and part of that being attracted to a female, looked on as wrong in her community, and this becomes a real heartbreaking, empathy evoking, deep insight into a troubled teenage mind.
Oh my heartbreak for Lucy, as she tries to stifle her feelings, how she believes if she works at it she can learn to love Martin, and keep to her family’s expectations. I loved the quote about her mother when thinking about her reaction to discovering she was a lesbian and how everything would change between them: “my sweet and stinging honeybee”. Beautifully tragic.
We see her absolute happiness with Susannah and I wished and wished she would be true to herself rather than hide away this beautiful relationship. The way she talks about her love is so tender, honest and nostalgic of that all consuming discovery of love, I felt the author really captures and conveys this:
“It is beyond words. This isn’t a feeling, it is a state if being... She has put herself at the centre of my attention, she has taken control of my emotions, and I feel her thrashing around within me, so intensely. I pray she will never go”.
I recommend this to those that enjoy a love story, and a read that is packed with emotion.

Thankyou for advanced copy. Overall I enjoyed this book. Found some of the narrative quite gossipy however it is focusing on a teenage Lucy finding her way through finishing school and finding out who she in the world. Would recommend and would read more by this author.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "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. I don't really need to say much more than that, but I will.

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.

Sunburn is a fantastic debut from a new author. A fresh coming-of-age tale set in the early 90s, it follows the main character Lucy as she grows up in a small village in rural Ireland.

As the novel begins, Lucy is content in her village, with the same people at school, on the same farm, with the same friends. Her fate of marrying her best friend Martin and settling down seemingly decided for her. However, she can’t avoid the growing feelings she has for her friend Susannah. Caught between unmoving conservatism and the possibilities which Susannah offers her, Lucy’s certainties of her future begin to crumble.

It appears that motherhood is the nearest thing to an inherited career that I can hope for

The heart of the novel is the intricacies of female relationships; those between mother and daughter, and with her friends. The dynamic within her friendship group changes as Lucy and Susannah’s relationship intensifies, putting pressure on friendships assumed unending.

Without the girls, I don’t know who I would be. They are a very big part of who I am. All my life, they have been laying a beautiful path for me, and I am so grateful for it.

As Lucy becomes more confident in herself, her relationship with her mother sours, leading her to have to make decisions that she dreads. Susannah also has a strained relationship with her mother, who is emotionally neglectful and has a reputation in the village.

I am afraid that we might all be our mothers’ daughters

The novel also focuses on the journey of becoming comfortable in yourself. And, more importantly, the confidence and courage that truly being yourself requires.

I think soon I will like myself all the way through, and I won’t mind what people think of me

With an engaging plot and characters, and wonderfully written, Sunburn is a joy to read. I encourage anyone who’s looking for a new queer coming-of-age tale to pick this one up!

Well written book on sensitive topics handled with care. It was just a good story and I will recommend it even to people who its not written for. Enlightening!

Set in rural Ireland in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, Sunburn follows Lucy, assumed to be on the road to marriage and kids with her neighbour and best friend, Martin.
Lucy is fifteen in 1989, one of a group of girls tightly bound by friendship, fraught with all the worries and pitfalls of adolescence. She desperately needs to fit in, to ignore the troubling feelings she has for Susannah while daring to hope those feelings are requited. By the end of the summer it’s clear that they are but while Susannah wants their love made public Lucy is terrified of coming out. Then something happens which forces her to make a decision one way or the other.
Lucy tells us her story, full of the passion of first love and the terror of being discovered in a town alert to any non-conformity and judgemental of it. Howarth’s depiction of claustrophobic village life where everyone knows everyone else’s business is convincing. The small kindnesses doled out to Susannah, emotionally and physically neglected by her mother, are balanced by the closed mindedness of Lucy’s friends and family. Faced with the possibility of ostracism, her solution is both painful and selfish, although perhaps understandable. Howarth’s novel is not without flaws – I found it overlong and a little florid at times – but overall, it’s an enjoyable coming-of-age story which left me hoping things were easier these days for the Lucys of this world.