Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

There have been quite a few books recently on the subject matter of the clash of cultures between young moneyed people and less well off friends. I suppose this is partly the Saltburn effect. Other reviewers have mentioned that this book is like Saltburn but it reminded me more of Brideshead Revisited except of course in Brideshead it is the aristocrat who suffers more than his more ordinary friend.

As in many of these books, things do not always go well for the characters from different worlds. We have an unnamed narrator, the only name he is ever given is the crass and offensive "Whiteboy" by his black female friend. It might have been interesting and more unusual if the book had explored that sort of casual racism between people of colour. I suppose it underlines that the narrator is an outsider in more than one world, although, to be fair it is only Jazz who diminishes him with this name. The other main character is the privileged Felix who is at best shallow and indifferent and at worst cruel and entirely selfish.

I enjoyed the book, and found the themes interesting. None of the characters are particularly likeable. I did sympathise with the narrator but he makes some foolish choices and seems oddly naïve.

There is a lot of nastiness and pettiness in the end in the way the rich people behave, even to the extent of spitefully withdrawing the narrator's audition for the conservatoire.

I am sure this is not the intention of the book but I can't help but think that the all too English message is "know your place and stay there.".

Thank you to Netgalley and the UK publishers for an advanced copy of this author's debut novel in exchange for an honest review.

Firstly, I really enjoyed this and i would thoroughly recommend! Think Saltburn but minus all the weird stuff and instead injected with a lot more depth and tackling difficult topics and feelings in a lot more detail.

The book tackles racism, classism, ruthlessness, family, friendships, drug addiction, violence and police brutality, and even more. I was always invented and it did this in a sensitive way.

The only criticism I had was that for all the developments in the plot, I didn't feel like the protagonist showed the same internal development and I didn't learn enough about how he was changed by the events in the story.

Saltburn meets your gaslighting ex-boyfriend in WFH's debut novel, and I couldn't put it down!

I was hooked from the beginning - the prose is excellent and I think that William is fantastic at writing awful people. It handles a number of social justice issues really well and I thought the representation was meaningful and delivered well.

I'll definitely be checking out William's future work!

What could be a better setting that the South of France for a summer holiday? This is the setting for Sunstruck where a young unnamed protagonist, from a humble background, is a guest of the immensely wealthy Blake family. Lily, his friend from university invites him for a summer trip and straightaway sibling rivalry between Lily and Felix emerges as they both vie for his attention.
An excellent and subtly presented story of wealth, the class system and racism and how ultimately, the outsider will never be fully accepted. A slow burner that is well written and thought-provoking. Immensely good.

"Walking through the pristine streets of the Blake's neighbourhood, I'd wondered at how, in a city so full of dirt and people and noise, this place could be so neat and quiet."

A hypnotic, atmospheric novel. Reminiscent of Emerald Fennell's Saltburn, but with more depth, heart, and a more nuanced take on class and sexuality, with the added critical perspective on racism. I ate this UP, finishing it in just a few days.

It took me far too long to realise that the narrator is never named. Once I realised, though, it made complete sense. He is an outsider in the Blake's world. While he isn't desperate to be a part of it, he justifiably believes that through Felix, he somewhat is. But he never quite breaks through their exclusive membrane into the world of privilege. So of course he is never named; he doesn't truly mean anything to these people. He is just a visitor in their world.

Speaking of Felix and the Narrator: at first, I thought the tension between the two wouldn't go anywhere, that it would be more of a Saltburn/The Talented Mr Ripley deal where one is obsessed with the other (or in Sunstruck's case, both obsessed with one another) to a homoerotic degree, but never quite breaches a true romantic bond. But I was pleasantly surprised when they actually acted on their desires, and confirmed them to be more than just intense fascination. Their relationship quickly becomes unhealthy and less worthy of admiration, but it was just refreshing to see this (somewhat) trope turned on it's head.

The novel's first half follows the Narrator and his summer with the affluent Blake family, and the second chronicles the former's life in London, now intertwined with said family. The first act is heady and escapist, almost removed from reality in it's cloud of privilege. The second half is more grounded, grittier, exploring themes of race and class in more depth. Bonds are made, shattered, rebuilt. and shattered once more. The Narrator is asked to keep more secrets than he ever bargained for. You'll have to read this wonderful novel for yourself to find out just how it all starts to break down.

Thank you NetGalley and Cornerstone/Merky Books for this ARC, I can't wait to get my hands on a physical copy!

"It’s kind of mad here. I knew they were posh and stuff but this is next level."
"You’re at a castle in France with a girl whose dad owns half of Kensington. Babe, what did you think it was gonna be like?’ ‘Yeah, obviously, but, like, at uni Lily’s relatively normal—"
"Be f*cking for real, WhiteBoy. She once looked me directly in the eye and asked me if I could ski."

New fave book alert! I knew i would enjoy this but I didn't know i would be obsessed with it !
This ticks all the boxes that i want from a book, great writing, great setting , immersive story and characters that stay with you when you are not reading. It's Saltburn meets CMBYN meets Open Water. It's about race, class, wealth and British society. It's lit fic at it's best and I cannot recommend this enough! It also has BBC drama vibes so here I am waiting for a screen version......

Beautiful but pacey, this is a fantastic debut novel!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reading copy.

This book featured in the 2025 version of the influential and frequently literary-prize-prescient annual Observer Best Debut Novelist feature (last year included Colin Barrett and Kaliane Bradley, 2023
Tom Crewe. Michael Magee and Jacqueline Crooks – and earlier years have featured Natasha Brown, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Douglas Stuart, Sally Rooney, Rebecca Watson, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, JR Thorp Bonnie Garmus, Gail Honeyman among many others).

It was also winner of the 2023 Merky Books New Writers Prize – Merky Books is a PRH imprint set up with Stormzy with a worthy aim to publish “bold voices from untraditional spaces that are inclusive and intersectional .. [and] .. to break down barriers in the publishing industry” and the prize comes with a publishing contract for the unfinished submission (I think its will be the fourth of the winners to be published – with Hafsa Zayyan’s “We Are All Birds of Uganda” and Jyoti Patel’s “The Things That We Lost” the two others I have read.

The author is British-Jamaican, growing up outsider Manchester as the children of lawyers before studying Medicine and earning a Master’s in Clinical and Forensic Psychology at Newcastle University – and worked as a Junior Doctor before (I think) becoming a full time writer after their Prize win.

The author has said of the book that it draws on their “experiences of dating, but also just of like, being a person of colour in quite white spaces, which is something that I think most people of color in the UK experience to some degree, and trying to find the point of human connection in those, like, quite fraught spaces. I guess it’s come from a thought experiment, on how to bridge those gaps and love across things like race and class. And it's just about how, whether or not it’s strong enough to overcome those very structural things because love feels so organic in some ways, but then, now there’s all of this structure around it”. And also that it draws on the cultural dislocation they felt when sent to board at the exclusive Shrewsbury School aged 13.

Their unnamed (which at first seems odd given the copious introductions and namedropping that occurs in the novel but ultimately I think works very effectively to reinforce the novel’s themes) narrator is also of British-Jamaican heritage, also grew up near Manchester and also a student at Newcastle University but from a more working class, single parent background (having grown up largely with their grandmother after the loss of his mother who suffered from mental health struggles and with his father absent apart from one brief visit). At University one of his closest friends is Jazz/Jasmine – fiercely proud and protecting of her Nigerian roots and Blackness and who affectionately calls the narrator “WhiteBoy” due to his inability to follow her Black cultural references.

But he is also friends with Lily Blake – a white girl and wanabee phorographer from a very rich family – and the first part of the novel is in his post University Summer where she persuades him to join her family at their chateaux in France. There he meets Lily’s father, her mother Annie (who turns out to be a jazz singer that the narrator and his Grandma loved and via whose records he taught himself music), Lily’s rather troubled younger sister Dot (who later identifies as non-binary) and her charismatically attractive brother Felix a promising actor.

This first 40% or so of the novel takes place over some days of that Summer and features a series of family traditions around Lily’s birthday, excessive privilege and an ostentatious Summer party which includes as a guest a high profile Black Conservative MP, Lily’s University friends (who rather amusingly Jazz calls “Jack Wills Anonymous”) and various other rich people. Throughout the section the mutual attraction between the narrator and Felix grows and culminates in a romantic lakeside picnic and sex session.

There is no question that this section, written like the rest of a novel in a present tense which I rarely appreciate in literary fiction, does convey a sense of decadence and family tensions as well as Summer and sexual heat – but I have to say it was not to my tastes or interest and I felt that the author’s ideas of being a person of colour in white spaces was rather buried under the extreme privilege conveyed in which all but a very small percentage (if not quite the 0.001% the narrator says to Jazz) would feel rather lost.

The remainder of the novel is set back in the UK – Felix and the narrator have come out as an item (at least to Felix’s family – very specifically not to anyone else much to the narrator’s growing unease and frustration) and Felix’s acting career is about to take off (first via a play and then into film).

And the novel takes off at the same time.

There are still scenes of privilege – a country estate shooting at the estate of family friends (an estate which happens to be very close to where the narrator grew up) for example – but they are much more deliberately and cleverly now set against other, often deliberately contrasting scenes:

More detail on the narrator’s homelife and the harrowing health issues in his family’s background

A visit to the Notting Hill Carnival in which the narrator and his black friends, trying to protest a police killing in the US are caught up in a heavy handed police response and then the near fatal beating of one of their number – a protest which the Conservative MP turns to her own advantage

The resulting protests and actions that Jazz and her friends take – and to which the narrator is reluctant to be drawn

Increasing tensions within the Blake family even as they (as well as the publicists/PR handlers for Felix and to a lesser extent Lily) start closing ranks against the narrator and the shadow he might cast over their reaction

And the novel ends with two bravura scenes: a protest at an exhibit of Lily’s photos of the Carnival which brilliant re-purposes the Conservative politician’s speech; and a chilling final showdown between the narrator and Annie with a brilliant last line.

For me this was a fascinating journey from a novel I really did not rate – to one I thought was excellent and I think a real contender for literary prize recognition.

I really love stories that explore wealth and class in this big-house-dysfunctional-family type of way, and was immediately hooked here by the gorgeous French summer setting. The story then takes these themes so much further, with a commentary on race and sexuality too that are all seamlessly woven into the plot, with a very likeable main character, and very believable characters more generally (though you definitely don't like most of them!). The writing is absolutely brilliant and had me gripped until about 80% when I felt we were nearing the end but not quite getting there in a succinct way. For me that's why it's not quite 5* but I still came away from the novel having enjoyed it – for a debut this was a really impressive read and I'd definitely pick up something new from him.

Excellent debut from Hunter, placing a young, working class black man in an environment of (white) privilege - first on a sun drenched family holiday with a university friend, and subsequently as the lover of his friend’s brother. With the advantages that are opened up through being part of this milieu, albeit given grudgingly, I was reminded of The Line of Beauty (far more than Saltburn, which seems a rather shallow comparison). A toxic combination of class, race and sexuality means this never feels like a book with a happy ending but it’s immensely rewarding. Hunter’s use of language is evocatively descriptive - you can smell the expensive sun cream, or the dinginess of a flat after a sex and drugs binge. Fantastic debut, looking forward to seeing more from them.

This is a tale about Race, class, status, and sexuality. It is a book about knowing who our friends are, knowing who our family are, and knowing when friends become family. This is a story about what we are willing to sacrifice for love, what we are willing to do for love, and those pieces of ourselves that we choose to keep hidden for the sake of love. Take yourself on a journey into the lives of the wealthy, well connected, entitled, told through the eyes of a poorer Black man....Read it!

This is a powerful read, with stirring commentary around class, sexuality, race, and privilege, that in no way detracts from the grace of the prose. A real triumph, and a timely exploration of modern day relationship dynamics. Escapist, of course, thanks to its glorious Riviera setting, but nonetheless incredible hard-hitting.

DNF 10%

Unfortuantely the writing style of this book just isn't for me - I got frustrated with the lack of immersion and disliked the characters (not in a fun way either)

I found it intriguing that so many other reviewers also were reminded of Saltburn while reading this book, particularly in the first half. Glamorous, dark and suspenseful - this book is beautifully written. Highly recommended.

Going into this I was unsure what to expect. But I struggled throughout. I wasn't invested in the story or characters. It was missing that little something to intrigue me.

I once came across some writing advice that said to "write with all the senses". And that's what William Rayfet Hunter does throughout this wonderful, sensuous, sexy book. This writer is a major new talent - can't wait to see what they do next.

Thank you to Random House UK, Cornerstone and NetGalley for an advanced copy of Sunstruck by William Rayfet Hunter.

This gave Saltburn vibes in the best way possible, with more of an underlying depth to it that had me hooked.

A vivid story exploring the ways in which we can lose ourselves to love, with devastating consequences.

I've been thinking about this book a lot since I finished it. The first half of the book gave such strong saltburn vibes that I kept expecting something awful to happen to the characters - the story starts with our main character (only ever referred to as "white boy") spending a dreamlike, toasty summer with his unbelievably rich, old-money friend Lily and her family. He quickly falls for her brother, Felix (saltburn again, see?), and the two flirt and dance around each other for the first half of the book. The stay in the Chateau is tainted with microaggressions against white boy, and subtle jokes and stabs, and really weird family traditions that always keep him "othered" from the family and their rich friends. I enjoyed the first half of the book, and the flashbacks to whiteboys childhood were a good contrast and explained some of his behavior in the present timeline. His grandma is the best.

Sunstruck by William Rayfet Hunter is a beautifully written and thought-provoking novel that explores complex themes of identity, privilege, and societal expectations. Hunter's prose is poetic and evocative, drawing readers into a richly atmospheric world. The novel's introspective style invites deep reflection on the human condition, making it both emotionally resonant and intellectually stimulating.

The narrative is layered with subtle observations about power dynamics and social hierarchies, offering a nuanced commentary on contemporary society. Hunter masterfully balances lyrical language with raw emotional honesty, creating a compelling and immersive reading experience.

Really interesting study of power, race and love. Or is it love.

2 people from different backgrounds, meet and begin a tempestuous relationship. Not a happy love story and quite typical on these current times who comes off worse.