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

cadence. 

If Mary looks different in every country, that must mean there is no true face for her, so she must not be real. Don't you think? Lately i've thought about how easy life would be if i were to give up on god and the whole thing. 

Never in all my years of christianity has there been talk of an angel like this. My god, she is not even walking, she floats around the room.

He would be so easy to fall for. Looking at him, i search myself for some feeling, for the spark that should be there, but there is nothing. Surely that means that i must love susannah at my very core, it must mean that she and i are right together. Maybe later on this evening i'll feel somnething for him. I think i would like to feel something for him. 

'Oh, Lucifer.' And with those words, i am prepared to receive the lord. 

Her voice, her blessed voice, and the small tune of her accent, exactly the same as mine, only better. It is home in a sound. Susannah is the place where i belong. This is heaven, this is all i want. 

Everything is easy. Everything makes sense here. She takes off her jumper, and drops it on my dresser, knocking over statuette of the virgin mary. In the dresser, there are two sets rosary beads, a brigid's cross, and an iron pendant on a chain. And then there is her, more worthy of worship, with a knee on either side of my hips. When she is here, it is so easy to forget what i have been made to believe.

Susannah O'Shea is not just a girl from our class, but that she is a seraph who found crossmore, and that i don't have time for him because i am too busy kneeling at the altar of her navel. 

I think you feel it a lot heavier than i do. Sometimes i think i make it worse for you. I promise if you get through it, i'll make it worth it. I'll marry you if you get past all the shame of being with me. 

I no longer count the hours or the days, it's only the time that she is with me, and the time i have to wait until she's with me again. 

I really do think that, in another life, martin and i would be together. In every life but this one, we would probably be together. 

He wants his girl next door. I want the girl in the big, echoing house on the other end of the village.

Being alone with her now, i feel i am the nearest i have ever been to god. It is her, she breathed my soul into me. Its is crossmore, our small rural heaven.

I would drape my own soul over her body to protect her from eyes like mine.

She took her eucharist before me, and i quietly apologised to Jesus for the downgrade from her tongue to mine.

Karen

Will you still put your mouth to me so feverishly then, when I have fully decayed? 

It's hard to imagine him as anything but a mumble at the kitchen table and the smell of the farm. In a way, he is a stranger. We don't really know each other.

Although Dad is always home, he is just as absent as Phil. At least Susannah's father gives her all his attention when he is around. Sometimes it feels as though my father is uncomfortable around me. It’s like he doesn’t even know how to show that he is interested in me. We don’t talk about football or farming, so we don’t really talk. 

Julia Rutgers

Let me take it too far, let me cause irreparable damage. Darling, let me hurt you.

Even when it is inconsequential, it is nice to be brave and assertive, it is nice to bend down to their height and ask them about school, and to whisper silly things about the nuns to them. I am not afraid of the nuns anymore. I have been in Eden all summer long, I know divinity better than they ever will. 

“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.

gurlene 

ASTAGHFIRULLAAHHHHHHHGH BUKU GILAAAAAAAAAA

Saffy

emotions were beautifully written, the turmoil of catholic guilt so damning and so well captured 

literary embodiment of home video by lucy dacus

rachel

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

widya

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 

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.

Sunburn

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