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Review: Sunshine by Robin McKinley

>>Thursday, July 1, 2010

Title: Sunshine
Author: Robin McKinley
Pages: 405
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Rating: C
Challenge: Calico Reaction's Book Club - June Challenge

From back of the book: There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it's unwise to walk. But there hadn't been any trouble out at the lake for years, and Sunshine just needed a spot where she could be alone with her thoughts. Vampires never entered her mind. Until they found her...

Warning: Spoilers.

The first line of the book is this: "It was a dumb thing to do but it wasn't that dumb." I thought this sentence was awkward, frustrating and just overall hard to read. That's basically the way I felt for the rest of the novel.

I was fine with the story and the writing until I got to the part where Sunshine is being held captive and all of a sudden we learn that she has extraordinary powers. There was no hint at this before and I thought this came out of left field, especially since Sunshine was able to describe so accurately how her grandma taught her to use her powers. How do you forget a thing like that until the second day you are held captive?

I felt the most frustrating thing about this novel was the style it was written and Sunshine's voice. I couldn't believe someone would tell a story by cutting off every action scene by talking about nonsense. I remember being particularly frustrated when Sunshine went off on a tangent about something about the design of the roads in her town or something equally pointless. After the incident at the house and Sunshine escapes, she does nothing. Nothing but bake for maybe a couple hundred pages. I just didn't get it.

Often I thought of Sunshine was playing the victim most of the novel. Even though she never helps herself, she manages to do extraordinary things like escape a vampire, allow one to walk in sunlight, track vampires, and even kill one. This really annoyed me because I could not believe the Sunshine who was obsessed with cinnamon rolls could ever do these things.

Anyways, enough ranting about it. I'm disappointed because I think this story had some great potential but turned out to really frustrate me in the end. A lot of people love this book, and I appreciate that, but it just didn't work for me. I still hope to read McKinley's other works such as Beauty and her upcoming Pegasus. C

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