Scan barcode
maudlin444's review against another edition
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
rhiannonperry's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
spenkevich's review against another edition
5.0
A masterpiece of a debut!
The passion and power of first love can rattle loose the bolts of one's heart and rebuild it into a shape that forever bears the signatures and scars from its formative experience. Such can be said of my own heart from Chloe Michelle Howarth’s searingly gorgeous sapphic novel, Sunburn, which has practically reprogramed my heartbeat to its poetic rhythms. ‘Now is the time between birth and slaughter’ begins this breathtaking bildungsroman that takes intimate investigations on the multitudes of change felt at the cusp of adulthood to show how they become milestones of the self in this interim between the cradle and grave. It is a story of Lucy and her awakening desires for Susannah, a desire so great she feels her body cannot possibly contain it, yet in the face of an unwelcoming society that feeds on rumors and castigations she feels her desire is shameful and contorts from happiness to fit the image others want for her. It is also a story of shifting dynamics between friends and family as ‘things fall apart when you grow up.’ Sunburns reads in a blaze of poetic glory fueled by intense and introspective prose that captures adolescent anxiety overcome by emotion across a narrative of being ‘pulled in two very different directions,’ of love in conflict with one’s community and the strength required to walk away from shame into self-actualization.
‘Since I have known her, Susannah has been a flame in bloom. She took me from ash and made me human. I fear if she spends one more day in the garden, her flame will dwindle, and to ash I will return.’
This book skyrocketed to my “favorites” shelf. I really enjoyed buddy reading this one with Liv (you should definitely read their incredible review here) and discussing it along the way. Set in rural Ireland in the early 90’s, Sunburn follows Lucy between the ages of 15 to 20, pulling us along her internal monologues as she tries to ride the currents of her own emotions while fearing she will dash upon the rocks of public image and ostracization. Her focus, growing into an obsession and outpouring of love, is always Susannah. ‘The way that Lucy feels about Susannah is the book, ’ Haworth explains in an interview and we experience Lucy process major moments of growth over the years in relation to her love for Susannah. It begins in trepidation, realizing ‘I am reading deeper into her unconscious movements,’ but initially completely unable to recognize what she is feeling is a crush. Its adorable. The two begin to grow closer and closer through their teenage years and eventually reveal their shared desires for one another, unleashing a universe of passion and new concerns that carry the second half of the novel.
Chloe Michelle Howarth’s prose really sends the novel on an emotional roller coaster that made this not only one of the most underlined books I’ve read in years but also one that shook my heart and soul so gloriously that it was probably detectable on a seismograph. Howarth seizes upon teenage angst and over-dramatic flair as an opportunity to push her prose into ecstatic expressions. You get some killer lines like ‘hate me if you want to hate me, I’d love the attention,’ that make me love this book even more, but also Howarth teases that, despite there being some really sharp symbolism in the book, Lucy’s mind often overanalyzes everything in a really relatable way.
BEEN THERE. Though this is not language Lucy can vocalize so much of her outpourings for Susannah arrive in the form of letters, adding another wonderful dynamic to the narrative but also nudging a primary theme about hiding desire.
‘And although we go far to escape them, at one time or another, we must return to Crossmore. To the roots of ourselves.’
The rural Irish setting is key to the novel and to Howarth’s heart, with Crossmore and the visual landscape reflecting her own natural surroundings. ‘I wanted it to be really unapologetically Irish, with Irish names and such,’ Howarth said in the Irish Times, ‘I wouldn’t have enjoyed writing something that didn’t include that’ There is a connection with nature and the way ‘the days drip by as slow as half-melted candle wax,’ could also be applied to the slow but sensory pacing of the novel that really helps you feel like you inhabit the space alongside the characters. Add to this the ways that emotions and the seasons are often intertwined (or, as Liv points out, the way light reflects the state of Susannah), with summer being the season of outpourings of passion:
Much of the novel takes place in 1992, which is one year before Ireland would decriminalize homosexuality in 1993 (later in 2015 Ireland was the first country to legalized same sex marriage by popular vote as well as allow trans people to legally self-identify) and in a rural community where the idea of “traditional values” reign supreme. It is a place where ‘motherhood is the nearest thing to an inherited career that I can hope for,’ and people are kept in line by rumours and outcast for being different.
Susannah and Lucy have different reactions to these sorts of rumors with Susannah already implicated due to the split of her wealthy parents and a mother that runs around with men. ‘I fear that Crossmore is too deep in me, and I would not know how to exist elsewhere,’ Lucy worries, and this fear along with losing her mother’s love if she were to openly admit she is a lesbian, become a rift between Susannah and her.
‘With or without me, she will go on blooming, she will always be a glorious thing. I would rather lose everything than lose her. I realise this too late…’
In many ways Sunburn is about choices that define identities with the choice between Susannah and Crossmore in general a major struggle for teenage Lucy. Before Susannah, Lucy struggles to understand herself and uncertain why she can’t feel anything for boys like Martin the way she thinks she should. Once she enters a relationship with Susannah, however, Lucy feels her true self, feels purpose, feels pulsating with desire to live and dream.
She also feels a validated sense of self worth. ‘All along I thought Susannah was like a god,’ she muses, having obsessed over her for years, ‘now I kind of feel like a god too,’ or that they ‘are equal parts.’ There is the aspect that she feels validated but, like every aspect of this book, it is viewed in context with—and because of—Susannah.
Susannah gives her meaning she didn’t know she had before. But while ‘neither of us wants to be a cousin that the village isn’t supposed to know about,’ Susannah wants to be able to be openly a couple while Lucy fears the social repercussions. ‘Even with all the love that I have for her, I’m not ready to be out. Not yet. I’m just somebody in love with Susannah. That’s enough.’ Lucy wants it all, Crossmore and Susannah, and neither to define her.
However, we see this isn’t the case. When Lucy allows Crossmore and the opinions of others to define her, it is a feeling of shame, sin, and falseness. ‘I pretend so well I almost believe myself,’ she says. When they are caught together she thinks ‘heaven is fractured; Susannah and I are among you now, all you awful sinners,’ and even later still clings to the idea that ‘to be with her is a sin,’ until Evelyn finally tells her ‘Girl, there’s no such thing as sin.’ Which returns to the idea of Susannah as a god figure, because in Crossmore we are also reminded of the deep Catholic hold on rural Ireland.
I can’t help but mention Sister Michael from Derry Girls admitting “I do love a good statue” as a jest at how much iconography permeates Catholicism, which is also present in Lucy’s veneration of Susannah. There is a lot of religious symbolism in her imagery of Susannah (burning fire for instance) and the worship comes interlaced with guilt and sin. It is a really incisive linguistic tell of her Catholicism and how her desire for Susannah is both viewed as a move towards something holy but also fearful as a fall from grace. Having been raised in the Catholic church and being close with ex-christian queer peers, trust me, this is totally a thing.
‘All I’ve done is fall for Susannah. It is not shameful or radical or wild. Anybody would fall for Susannah. I never meant to upset anybody.’
This book is a burning indictment on the harms caused from homophobia. All Lucy and Susannah wanted was love. To be able to be, say, go to a dance together without it being a scandal. To simply exist in the world together without it being turned into a whole thing to give the rumor or hatemongers something to rage about to fill the voids in their life.
Among the harshest aspects are the ways those who claim to love her react. ‘To Mother, I am no longer Lucy,’ she thinks as her mother ignores her and refuses to feed her (Liv makes a brilliant point that food is used symbolically for love in the novel, from withholding it to Martin’s lumpy and cold meals reflective of her inability to truly love him).
Mothers figures are a key theme to the novel, with Lucy seeing how Susannah wilts when her mother leaves and fears the same for herself if she does not lie about her true self to regain her mother’s approval. ‘Either I can be who Mother expects me to be, or I can be whoever I want to be. Each seems as treacherous as the other. I will find myself, soon, I just need to stop acting my age and grow up.’ And life changes are coming at her fast.
‘The life that I know will morph out of shape. The girls will be far away. I will be somebody different. I am grown, and yet I have never felt so young.’
Though this attempt to be what her mother wants instead of herself causes her to analyze every aspect of her life during one of lifes biggest moments of transitions: graduating school and moving beyond the gates of adolescence. Sunburn so eloquently captures that feeling of excitement yet also sadness during moments of big change and makes it felt so deeply I was right back at 18 watching friendships being packed into boxes as we dispersed around the country. ‘Something has changed. We are not the people that we used to be,’ Lucy observes, and this seeps into every relationship she knows. Especially Martin, who was a friendship so easy but now under the context of dating to appease her mother everything feels fragile and timid.
Martin is a really endearing character and Howarth does an excellent job setting up the major life choice between Martin and a life with Susannah—or at least a life embracing her sexuality—by having Martin be a perfect choice on all fronts all except for her sexuality. He ‘is so kind and caring and offers a secure future,’ her family approves, society approves, but she can never truly love him. Will she find that this element of love is more important than hiding behind a socially acceptable mask?
This becomes the big lesson of the novel. ‘I can have her, she says, but it has to be all of her, and it has to be honest, and it has to be now,’ yet can she walk away from the people of her life, from Crossmore, to embrace this? ‘We live with our eyes closed, Susannah and her money, Martin and his land, and me, without the confidence or ability to do anything on my own,’ she thinks, and we see how she is often guided by a mother figure because of her inability to stand for herself. Though it is the mothers who hurt her the most, even Maria, the mother figure of her friend group, who will later betray Lucy’s secrets. ‘If you’d lose them over this, then maybe you never had them at all,’ Susannah advises. A harsh truth, but a difficult one to embrace.
‘There are so many people in the real world, Lucy. Not everybody is your mother. Not everybody wants to get married off and live on a farm. People would love you the way you are, we just need to find those people’
I could honestly go on about this novel for pages and pages. Sunburn is a towering achievement of queer fiction, of coming-of-age stories, of poetic expression, of just simply being a deeply moving novel. It captures so many specific feelings of riding the tide from childhood into adulthood as the maelstrom of desires, ego, and self-conscious investigations rains down. ‘Sweet Susannah, where I am a burnt-out star, you are the sun,’ says Lucy, and here I sit looking at this novel as if it, too, is the sun. Startlingly gorgeous and nuanced, this is a masterpiece of a debut novel from Chloe Michelle Howarth. It will burn you in its brilliant blaze of passion, and you will be better for it.
5/5
‘Susannah is the place where I belong. This is Heaven, this is all I want.’
The passion and power of first love can rattle loose the bolts of one's heart and rebuild it into a shape that forever bears the signatures and scars from its formative experience. Such can be said of my own heart from Chloe Michelle Howarth’s searingly gorgeous sapphic novel, Sunburn, which has practically reprogramed my heartbeat to its poetic rhythms. ‘Now is the time between birth and slaughter’ begins this breathtaking bildungsroman that takes intimate investigations on the multitudes of change felt at the cusp of adulthood to show how they become milestones of the self in this interim between the cradle and grave. It is a story of Lucy and her awakening desires for Susannah, a desire so great she feels her body cannot possibly contain it, yet in the face of an unwelcoming society that feeds on rumors and castigations she feels her desire is shameful and contorts from happiness to fit the image others want for her. It is also a story of shifting dynamics between friends and family as ‘things fall apart when you grow up.’ Sunburns reads in a blaze of poetic glory fueled by intense and introspective prose that captures adolescent anxiety overcome by emotion across a narrative of being ‘pulled in two very different directions,’ of love in conflict with one’s community and the strength required to walk away from shame into self-actualization.
‘Since I have known her, Susannah has been a flame in bloom. She took me from ash and made me human. I fear if she spends one more day in the garden, her flame will dwindle, and to ash I will return.’
This book skyrocketed to my “favorites” shelf. I really enjoyed buddy reading this one with Liv (you should definitely read their incredible review here) and discussing it along the way. Set in rural Ireland in the early 90’s, Sunburn follows Lucy between the ages of 15 to 20, pulling us along her internal monologues as she tries to ride the currents of her own emotions while fearing she will dash upon the rocks of public image and ostracization. Her focus, growing into an obsession and outpouring of love, is always Susannah. ‘The way that Lucy feels about Susannah is the book, ’ Haworth explains in an interview and we experience Lucy process major moments of growth over the years in relation to her love for Susannah. It begins in trepidation, realizing ‘I am reading deeper into her unconscious movements,’ but initially completely unable to recognize what she is feeling is a crush. Its adorable. The two begin to grow closer and closer through their teenage years and eventually reveal their shared desires for one another, unleashing a universe of passion and new concerns that carry the second half of the novel.
‘Another girl like me exists, and she is the most perfect girl in the world. The awful deed is done, our perfect love comes to life. I am hers, and she is mine.’
Chloe Michelle Howarth’s prose really sends the novel on an emotional roller coaster that made this not only one of the most underlined books I’ve read in years but also one that shook my heart and soul so gloriously that it was probably detectable on a seismograph. Howarth seizes upon teenage angst and over-dramatic flair as an opportunity to push her prose into ecstatic expressions. You get some killer lines like ‘hate me if you want to hate me, I’d love the attention,’ that make me love this book even more, but also Howarth teases that, despite there being some really sharp symbolism in the book, Lucy’s mind often overanalyzes everything in a really relatable way.
‘Tonight I find myself looking for her scent in the air, her touch in the pillowcase. It’s a strain to find meaning where there is none. It’s such a teenaged thing to do, why can I not stop doing it? Not everything is a symbol. Sometimes the world is plain and obvious. Sometimes the things I feel and the things I want don’t matter.’
BEEN THERE. Though this is not language Lucy can vocalize so much of her outpourings for Susannah arrive in the form of letters, adding another wonderful dynamic to the narrative but also nudging a primary theme about hiding desire.
‘And although we go far to escape them, at one time or another, we must return to Crossmore. To the roots of ourselves.’
The rural Irish setting is key to the novel and to Howarth’s heart, with Crossmore and the visual landscape reflecting her own natural surroundings. ‘I wanted it to be really unapologetically Irish, with Irish names and such,’ Howarth said in the Irish Times, ‘I wouldn’t have enjoyed writing something that didn’t include that’ There is a connection with nature and the way ‘the days drip by as slow as half-melted candle wax,’ could also be applied to the slow but sensory pacing of the novel that really helps you feel like you inhabit the space alongside the characters. Add to this the ways that emotions and the seasons are often intertwined (or, as Liv points out, the way light reflects the state of Susannah), with summer being the season of outpourings of passion:
‘The Summer has been just a little bit too warm, the sun has been a little too bright. My thoughts have been a little bit too uncontrollable. And my emotions a little too humid. They only grow more humid. It all just gets stickier. Soon I think I will be unable to go even one day without lying on the grass with her.’
Much of the novel takes place in 1992, which is one year before Ireland would decriminalize homosexuality in 1993 (later in 2015 Ireland was the first country to legalized same sex marriage by popular vote as well as allow trans people to legally self-identify) and in a rural community where the idea of “traditional values” reign supreme. It is a place where ‘motherhood is the nearest thing to an inherited career that I can hope for,’ and people are kept in line by rumours and outcast for being different.
‘Nasty rumours, which are scarcely confirmed and forever remembered…This is not a forgiving place. The fear of it takes me over. It takes us all over. We all have secrets, everybody is hiding something.’
Susannah and Lucy have different reactions to these sorts of rumors with Susannah already implicated due to the split of her wealthy parents and a mother that runs around with men. ‘I fear that Crossmore is too deep in me, and I would not know how to exist elsewhere,’ Lucy worries, and this fear along with losing her mother’s love if she were to openly admit she is a lesbian, become a rift between Susannah and her.
‘With or without me, she will go on blooming, she will always be a glorious thing. I would rather lose everything than lose her. I realise this too late…’
In many ways Sunburn is about choices that define identities with the choice between Susannah and Crossmore in general a major struggle for teenage Lucy. Before Susannah, Lucy struggles to understand herself and uncertain why she can’t feel anything for boys like Martin the way she thinks she should. Once she enters a relationship with Susannah, however, Lucy feels her true self, feels purpose, feels pulsating with desire to live and dream.
‘At last, I am defined. All my lonely days were not wasted, they led me to this most perfect union, this weaving of our two souls. The parts of me that were once afraid can no longer be found.Perhaps they will come back to terrify me again, but for now, I can’t feel them. For now, I allow myself to be wanted by her.’
She also feels a validated sense of self worth. ‘All along I thought Susannah was like a god,’ she muses, having obsessed over her for years, ‘now I kind of feel like a god too,’ or that they ‘are equal parts.’ There is the aspect that she feels validated but, like every aspect of this book, it is viewed in context with—and because of—Susannah.
‘ I live in a body that has loved her and I see with eyes that have witnessed her. She is part of my muscles, my tissue, she is unforgettable.’
Susannah gives her meaning she didn’t know she had before. But while ‘neither of us wants to be a cousin that the village isn’t supposed to know about,’ Susannah wants to be able to be openly a couple while Lucy fears the social repercussions. ‘Even with all the love that I have for her, I’m not ready to be out. Not yet. I’m just somebody in love with Susannah. That’s enough.’ Lucy wants it all, Crossmore and Susannah, and neither to define her.
‘I always thought a place like Crossmore would kill a person like me, but I realise now that places like Crossmore are made for people like me. There is space for me, for us, out on the edges, among the ruins and the hedges and the stone walls. These things are immovable. They belong to the world and cannot be altered. I hope that Susannah and I are like these things.I carve our initials into trees and scratch them onto rocks, hoping that a piece of us will remain in the landscape.’
However, we see this isn’t the case. When Lucy allows Crossmore and the opinions of others to define her, it is a feeling of shame, sin, and falseness. ‘I pretend so well I almost believe myself,’ she says. When they are caught together she thinks ‘heaven is fractured; Susannah and I are among you now, all you awful sinners,’ and even later still clings to the idea that ‘to be with her is a sin,’ until Evelyn finally tells her ‘Girl, there’s no such thing as sin.’ Which returns to the idea of Susannah as a god figure, because in Crossmore we are also reminded of the deep Catholic hold on rural Ireland.
‘Never in all my years of Christianity has there been talk of an angel like this.’
I can’t help but mention Sister Michael from Derry Girls admitting “I do love a good statue” as a jest at how much iconography permeates Catholicism, which is also present in Lucy’s veneration of Susannah. There is a lot of religious symbolism in her imagery of Susannah (burning fire for instance) and the worship comes interlaced with guilt and sin. It is a really incisive linguistic tell of her Catholicism and how her desire for Susannah is both viewed as a move towards something holy but also fearful as a fall from grace. Having been raised in the Catholic church and being close with ex-christian queer peers, trust me, this is totally a thing.
‘All I’ve done is fall for Susannah. It is not shameful or radical or wild. Anybody would fall for Susannah. I never meant to upset anybody.’
This book is a burning indictment on the harms caused from homophobia. All Lucy and Susannah wanted was love. To be able to be, say, go to a dance together without it being a scandal. To simply exist in the world together without it being turned into a whole thing to give the rumor or hatemongers something to rage about to fill the voids in their life.
‘‘My love now seems to be an aggressive, political thing. It is the ceaseless search for an identity and then committing to that identity. It is a fight to exist in my own home. Is that not exhausting? Is it worth it? It feels like the good parts of loving have been thrown on the backseat and forgotten about.’
Among the harshest aspects are the ways those who claim to love her react. ‘To Mother, I am no longer Lucy,’ she thinks as her mother ignores her and refuses to feed her (Liv makes a brilliant point that food is used symbolically for love in the novel, from withholding it to Martin’s lumpy and cold meals reflective of her inability to truly love him).
‘If everybody loved me as much as they claim to, I don’t think I would be in this position, back and forth between them like a pendulum, always stuck between her and everything else in the world. I am so sick I could scream.’
Mothers figures are a key theme to the novel, with Lucy seeing how Susannah wilts when her mother leaves and fears the same for herself if she does not lie about her true self to regain her mother’s approval. ‘Either I can be who Mother expects me to be, or I can be whoever I want to be. Each seems as treacherous as the other. I will find myself, soon, I just need to stop acting my age and grow up.’ And life changes are coming at her fast.
‘The life that I know will morph out of shape. The girls will be far away. I will be somebody different. I am grown, and yet I have never felt so young.’
Though this attempt to be what her mother wants instead of herself causes her to analyze every aspect of her life during one of lifes biggest moments of transitions: graduating school and moving beyond the gates of adolescence. Sunburn so eloquently captures that feeling of excitement yet also sadness during moments of big change and makes it felt so deeply I was right back at 18 watching friendships being packed into boxes as we dispersed around the country. ‘Something has changed. We are not the people that we used to be,’ Lucy observes, and this seeps into every relationship she knows. Especially Martin, who was a friendship so easy but now under the context of dating to appease her mother everything feels fragile and timid.
‘Being in his company has become so loaded. Now that he thinks I am almost his girlfriend, it’s like I am no longer his friend…Our boundaries, our language, our movements, they must all be monitored, I must bend over backwards to stop from hurting or arousing his feelings.’
Martin is a really endearing character and Howarth does an excellent job setting up the major life choice between Martin and a life with Susannah—or at least a life embracing her sexuality—by having Martin be a perfect choice on all fronts all except for her sexuality. He ‘is so kind and caring and offers a secure future,’ her family approves, society approves, but she can never truly love him. Will she find that this element of love is more important than hiding behind a socially acceptable mask?
‘These days all anyone wants to talk about is what is going to happen next, so much so that nobody cares about what’s happening now. All Susannah wants to do is run away, and all Martin wants to do is settle down, and I realise that I’ve only ever thought of ways to keep everyone happy, so I have no idea what I want’
This becomes the big lesson of the novel. ‘I can have her, she says, but it has to be all of her, and it has to be honest, and it has to be now,’ yet can she walk away from the people of her life, from Crossmore, to embrace this? ‘We live with our eyes closed, Susannah and her money, Martin and his land, and me, without the confidence or ability to do anything on my own,’ she thinks, and we see how she is often guided by a mother figure because of her inability to stand for herself. Though it is the mothers who hurt her the most, even Maria, the mother figure of her friend group, who will later betray Lucy’s secrets. ‘If you’d lose them over this, then maybe you never had them at all,’ Susannah advises. A harsh truth, but a difficult one to embrace.
‘There are so many people in the real world, Lucy. Not everybody is your mother. Not everybody wants to get married off and live on a farm. People would love you the way you are, we just need to find those people’
I could honestly go on about this novel for pages and pages. Sunburn is a towering achievement of queer fiction, of coming-of-age stories, of poetic expression, of just simply being a deeply moving novel. It captures so many specific feelings of riding the tide from childhood into adulthood as the maelstrom of desires, ego, and self-conscious investigations rains down. ‘Sweet Susannah, where I am a burnt-out star, you are the sun,’ says Lucy, and here I sit looking at this novel as if it, too, is the sun. Startlingly gorgeous and nuanced, this is a masterpiece of a debut novel from Chloe Michelle Howarth. It will burn you in its brilliant blaze of passion, and you will be better for it.
5/5
‘Susannah is the place where I belong. This is Heaven, this is all I want.’
mekrx's review against another edition
4.0
The writing was absolutely beautiful but I would have wished to see the ending explored more wholly, Lucy’s self-acceptance seemed a bit out-of-nowhere. Other than that, I really resonated with this gorgeous and gutting book and would recommend it to anyone.
rachelanngloria's review against another edition
3.5
3.5 stars. stunning for a debut novel. i had higher expectations considering the reviews. i felt it was repetitive towards the middle, the continuous prose of inadequacy and the worshipping of susannah just worded differently over and over again. a very intense and passionate novel
carmony's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
cfreesmeier's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
lesbian_cyborg's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
bellamejos's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
hotdoghannah's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Written likes it's meant to be reviewed in a book club