Sunshine by Robin McKinley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I finished this book a few weeks ago and have pretty mixed (but mostly positive) feelings about it. I certainly liked it a great deal, but I did have trouble with the idea of Robin McKinley writing a book about a human who ultimately has some sort of physical or romantic attachment to a vampire. Even though she started out amazingly by portraying Sunshine’s fear and disgust of the inhuman and repulsive vampires, in the end it kind of warped into the same old over-done thing.
I wasn’t as shocked by the language as a lot of other readers seemed to have been, probably because I’ve read much, much, more gratuitous language in urban fantasy and been summarily disgusted with it. I was surprised, but since it was brief I didn’t think it was so bad. This is definitely McKinley writing for a more mature audience, which is good because there is no shortage of darkness in Sunshine.
Nor is there a shortage of baking. If you don’t want to go mad from sugar cravings, be prepared with cinnamon rolls beforehand. I have become quite the aficionado for homemade cinnamon rolls from scratch since reading this book. After spooning honey out of a jar while reading Chalice I should have known to be prepared.
In short, Sunshine was a nice, solid read, as long as I like books to be (since I read through them so quickly) with tons of imagination and very little for me to criticize. I’ll look forward to a sequel, if it ever materializes.