Name: viv's review of Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth
Item: Sunburn
Rating: 5
Author: viv

Chloe Michelle Howarth

It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, 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.

Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.

Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative 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. But only one can offer her real happiness.

Sunburn

Karen

“How am I supposed to get past this delusion when she comes directly to me? My heart lurches- as if it wants to leave my awful body and go make a home in her.”

“Mother only wants the best for me. We are old and new versions of each other. I see pieces of her in me and pieces of myself in her. And still it’s like we speak two different languages. I and my funny rural blabber and she in whatever tongue grown women speak.”

Larissa Campos

Crossmore is as it always was: a wild and overgrown place where hearts swell and burst the most violently. We feel deeply here. No matter how far I go, I am soaked from the earth and dusted from the pollen, and I will always carry these deep feelings. So will Martin, so will Susannah, so will the others. And although we go far to escape them, at one time or another, we must return to Crossmore. To the roots of ourselves. It is so strange to be home.

All this time later, all the distance between us, all the worlds that keep her from me, and still I have shattered just by saying her name to Mother. The water is scalding, caustic, endless, and scrubbing my skin, I know that it would take an entire ocean to wash her off me.

Perhaps I’ll take those things to Evelyn’s and burn them. Perhaps I’ll keep them forever.

Lucy, You are my deepest wound, you always will be. I thought I was healing from you, with the distance and the heat, but I’m not. I can’t get over you unless you go away.

For a while, I thought that writing to you would help me move on, but it has only made the void greater. You waited so long for me, I wonder, are you still waiting? Because I cannot let you go.

Now that we are talking about her, I realise that Susannah and I were only together for one year. One small, very full year. Maybe even less than a year. It felt like a lifetime. Yes, I definitely need to move on.

When I was young, Granny used to call me a changeling. It seemed like a joke back then. It doesn’t anymore.

I come through my front door to the ringing telephone. It is Mother, looking to gossip. With such a great distance between us, we find it easy to forget the heinous parts of each other. We can just talk, untouched by her prejudice or my perversion. It’s nice to feel like we are ourselves, even briefly. Even falsely. She tells me how the postman scratched the side of the car, we are both annoyed, and we both laugh. I love this phone call, this funny lie that takes me away from my sad life. When we hang up, I am tremendously alone in the flat.

loathe emails. The terrible, pixelated text missing the loops of her handwriting. The screen missing her perfume. I cannot touch paper that she has touched. I cannot get any real trace of her.

ought to feel guilty, but I don’t. The feelings I have for her only exist as long as I am in her bed. When I leave, they disappear, both the good and the bad. It’s cruel, but my history has proven that I am cruel–cruellest of all to those I make love to. Given time and proper attention, perhaps Geraldine would show me her sensitive side, and my impressionable heart would probably give way to it. But Susannah keeps on sending her letters, and so I don’t have proper time or attention to give. This small link to her makes everything I do day to day feel inconsequential and imaginary; those letters are reality, nothing else.

and then one cream envelope, with ‘Lucy Nolan’ handwritten in bronze glittering ink, and I know this hand better than my own. I tear it open. Hello heartbreak, I hated to read that you’ve been sad, although I’ve been hoping that you would be. Karma. It’s unsigned, there is no need. Nobody else would send me a letter like this. Nobody else would be thrilled by my sadness. I am nobody else’s heartbreak. It’s possibly the worst reply I can imagine, and still it puts ripples in my heartbeat. It’s a reply. It’s Susannah O’ Shea. SOS. My soul has been saved. How predictable we are; she knew I would smell the paper, because I knew she would spray her perfume on it. This is a far greater, deeper rush than anything I felt this evening with Geraldine. S, I am more than sad, I can hardly breathe. However sad you want me to be, I promise I am sadder. Let me be the thing that fulfils your hopes. Let me do whatever it takes to earn some good karma. I’ll be here, gathering dust, waiting for your reply. L I don’t even think as I write it. When it is finished, I know for sure that I’ll never get over her for the rest of my life. Her letter goes into the drawer next to my bed, where all her letters from our schooldays hide. This small exchange has brought my pulse back. Just hearing from her has made me feel so excited, so driven, so romantic. I want her here now, so I can cook her dinner and listen to her talk. I want the life I have with Martin, but with her.

All the while, Evelyn continues to speak, and I let her. She never judges my motives, she only wants me to be happy. That’s what a good friend does, I think. Since Evelyn has let me exist as myself, I have a new love for existing.

‘I can’t. I’ll never get over her, you know?’ And she does know. At one time or another, everybody falls irreparably in love.

I decided never to fall in love again. Something as small as Geraldine leaning towards me could spark a fire in a person as fragile as I am. My life is sufficiently confusing without adding more feelings to it.

The last of August is peeling off my shoulders, revealing softer skin for the Autumn to destroy. It seems cruel that the Summer should leave me in a way as physical as this.

‘You know I’m leaving Crossmore. I won’t keep asking you to come with me, Lucy. One day I’ll just go without you.’

I felt so far away from you in the backseat. And when you turned around to whisper to us, I saw a strand of spit going from your teeth to your lips, and it was like a perfect gossamer cobweb, and I wanted to be caught in it. That’s dramatic, isn’t it? You’ve made me so dramatic.

Nobody notices when she looks me up and down and asks, ‘Whose are you?’ And I say, ‘Yours.’ And I see now why she has put up with all of this. It’s because we understand each other, it’s because we have this binding sort of love that is rare and good that we don’t get anywhere else. So rare and so good that I cannot even make sense of it, the same way that nobody can make real sense of God or the reasons why we are alive. I think that dancing with her tonight is the reason that I am alive.

I don’t know what else to do to please her, and so I stay out of sight.

have made her bitter. I am all wrong, and there’s nothing I can do to make it better. This new rage is not something I know how to navigate. This is another part of her, again. Although I want it gone, I love it. How many more parts of her are there?

But it was not real, because every time I blinked, I saw the green of Susannah’s eyes. She comes back to me so violently. The feeling of it is like nothing else. When I think of her, even for a second, my blood stills its rushing, my body is quiet, and my thoughts are turned down. All the world halts when I think of her. It’s simple. So how could anything have been real? How could I ever hope to be authentic when I am a constant lie? How deceitful I am. This isn’t who I want to be. But how easy life would be if I just stayed low down and out of sight, with only my thoughts of her, forever. These vivid thoughts of her. Having made do with them for so long, I know they can sustain me for quite some time, and that is lucky, because when I tell her what I have agreed to, she will refuse to speak to me.

To set myself free. To give everybody the truth that they deserve. I will tell Mother about my perfect day, and I will let her love me. I will tell Dad, and the boys. I will wake Granny and tell her, and she won’t be upset. They will all love me. How could they not love me, when there is nothing left of me but love?

anna 

this novel has inflicted permanent damage on both my heart and soul. i hated it. 5 stars. 

Stas

O livro me deixou com a sensação de fim de verão, como prometido. O que não foi avisado, é que esse fim de verão seria como correr uma maratona e logo sentir o ar frio contra a pele grudenta de suor. Não sinto frio, não me sinto limpa e não me sinto confortável, mas me sinto viva.

Queria olhar nos olhos dela e desafiar que lesse o mesmo livro, que fosse honesta e queria tanto ao ponto de não querer nada. 

Queria a versão da Suzanna e talvez me sentiria menos intrusa, mais acolhida. Vou querendo muita coisa até ficar sem ar e resolver que só quero dormir. Queria trocar cartas, jogar meu celular fora, saber que quando chegasse o próximo verão, ainda assinaríamos os papéis como "Sua, L" 

Esse livro abriu meu peito, consigo ver meu coração vivo e batendo. Se viro pro lado, ele cai. Mesmo assim, o esperado é que eu durma e viva mais um dia quente, que acaba frio.

O livro me deixou com a sensação de fim de verão, como prometido. O que não foi avisado, é que esse fim de verão seria como correr uma maratona e logo sentir o ar frio contra a pele grudenta de suor. Não sinto frio, não me sinto limpa e não me sinto confortável, mas me sinto viva.

Queria olhar nos olhos dela e desafiar que lesse o mesmo livro, que fosse honesta e queria tanto ao ponto de não querer nada. 

Queria a versão da Suzanna e talvez me sentiria menos intrusa, mais acolhida. Vou querendo muita coisa até ficar sem ar e resolver que só quero dormir. Queria trocar cartas, jogar meu celular fora, saber que quando chegasse o próximo verão, ainda assinaríamos os papéis como "Sua, L" 

Esse livro abriu meu peito, consigo ver meu coração vivo e batendo. Se viro pro lado, ele cai. Mesmo assim, o esperado é que eu durma e viva mais um dia quente, que acaba frio.

really makes you think about your own queerness and how much your family and environment shapes you. 

Thea Sophie

A raw, honest, heart wrenching story of first love from Lucy’s perspective as a queer teenager growing up in rural Ireland. 

The writing in this is so beautiful, it read more like a poem than a fiction novel. A bit repetitive at times, but starting halfway through, I couldn’t put it down.

Kaitlyn Wendler

A raw, honest, heart wrenching story of first love from Lucy’s perspective as a queer teenager growing up in rural Ireland. 

The writing in this is so beautiful, it read more like a poem than a fiction novel. A bit repetitive at times, but starting halfway through, I couldn’t put it down.

If i had a nickel for every queer irish novel i read this year i would have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice

You don’t get to twist my guts that way. Yet here I am, trying not to throw my emotions up. 

Romy

Claire Jorgensen

this book made me discover things about myself 

no villains, no heroes, just a town of people figuring it out and hurting each other in the process. a beautiful sapphic novel

Storm

have broken and mended my heart in ways only lesbians in christian households could understand

joys

it's exactly what it wants to be and it was not for me. dnf after 60%

Treyden Talbot

Naomi 

"Too late I realise that she has been the Summer of my life. What a slow and painful death this shall be."

i was hooked from page 1 this book is so so captivating

"Too late I realise that she has been the Summer of my life. What a slow and painful death this shall be."

i was hooked from page 1 this book is so so captivating

Listen, if she'd given me the manuscript, an oat milk latte, and a red pen, we could've gotten this up to five stars 

Regan Martin

“If you'd lose them over this, then maybe you never had them at all.”

sofia 🪆

after reading this book: I love everyone I have ever loved, again, in a new way <3 there are no sins to forgive. we were girls together

petrina

Such a candid perspective of struggling with sexuality 

Miranda Hall

Wow. For a debut novel, this was insane. Lucy's distinct voice was honestly unlike anything I've read before. She simultaneously felt far away from a real person and like the exact image I see in the mirror. The dread simmering from the pages, specifically in the last half, was palpable. It was hard to face many of the things this book addressed, and at times, I felt exactly how Lucy did. Her view of the world and herself was so narrow, a byproduct of growing up in a small, unchanged town. Knowing that there was so much more waiting for her while she struggled to see beyond the constraints of her farm was tough. The world feels so small at 17, and it's impossible to explain that everything you know then is not going to be everything you know forever. I was also deeply moved by the relationship between the girls and their mothers; so different yet so entirely the same. If this was a different story, Susannah and her mom could've reached an understanding before time ran out, and Lucy's mom would've embraced the little girl she's always known with open arms. This was not such a story. I'll probably think about this book and these girls forever.

lena

 is a breathtaking exploration of love, sexuality, identity, and the agony that comes with living in a world that does not understand you. It’s a novel that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt like they didn’t belong, who has ever loved someone they couldn’t be with, and who has ever struggled to reconcile their desires with the expectations placed upon them.

The characters are well-drawn, the scene is beautifully portrayed, and the emotions are intensely real. It's a novel that sticks with you long after you've finished it. For these reasons and more, it deserves nothing less than a five-star rating.

Deizra

Chloe Michelle Howarth’s Sunburn is a breathtaking exploration of love, sexuality, identity, and the agony that comes with living in a world that does not understand you. It’s a novel that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt like they didn’t belong, who has ever loved someone they couldn’t be with, and who has ever struggled to reconcile their desires with the expectations placed upon them.

The characters are well-drawn, the scene is beautifully portrayed, and the emotions are intensely real. It's a novel that sticks with you long after you've finished it. For these reasons and more, it deserves nothing less than a five-star rating.

Cate

This book is like if Good Luck, Babe! by Chappell Roan was a novel written by lesbian Hozier in the 90's. I enjoyed it thoroughly and found myself in both Lucy and Susannah. Every word they say to each other, about each other, is the most divine depiction of love I've read. 

deniz

Andrea Morales

close enough, welcome back call me by your name (no but this is the most beautiful wlw book i’ve ever read in my entire life, i cannot imagine this being any better). 

reading this in summer is a religious experience. i saw myself in and loved lucy as ferociously as she loved susannah. oh to love and be loved, lesbian love is a sacred thing.

anna &
Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth

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