Robin McKinley’s Sunshine

I lucked out on this book in a few ways.  It was another great recommendation from a friend and Amazon had it on sale ridiculously cheap.  I just couldn’t pass it up even though McKinley was a new author for me and my pile of books to read is getting pretty deep.

The novel has the now familiar construct of a young woman mostly on her own who somehow ends up with a horribly dangerous vampire that doesn’t eat her immediately.  Through the harrowing experiences they have she learns about herself and grows up.  But as with so many retold and remolded tales the story telling is what kept me turning the pages and regretfully putting it down when it got too late each night.

About half way through the book I started to notice the narrator has a tendency to spring major story changing facts on the reader without much lead in time or notice that you’re about to hear something important.  At times, they were presented in such a way I was turning back to reread them because I didn’t believe I’d read the past few pages correction.  After finishing the book and thinking about it for a week, I can’t decide if this helped me connect with what the main character was going through while she deals with sudden life changing events or if I was just annoyed by the mental whiplash I felt each time a new bomb was dropped.

Either way, I have a few more of McKinley’s books on my ‘want to read’ list now and if Sunshine has a sequel at any point I’ll be picking it up.