The feelings that Lucy has at the start when he notices her awareness of other women in her life was nothing short of perfection. The book focuses on the first love between two young girls who simply shouldn't, the delicacy and intricacy between the bonds of mother and daughter, and what to do when the one thing you know is right, is wrong to everyone else. Until the lines between friendship and a relationship begin to blur, and Lucy and Susannah fall for each other, despite all arrows in life pointing them away from each other. However, being raised in a tiny village, where everyone knows everything about everyone, it seems there is no place for these feelings Lucy holds for Susannah. She is fixated on the being that is Susannah, on what makes her unique, and becomes utterly infatuated.

As the summer heats up, Lucy begins to notice Susannah, one of the girls in her friendship group, in a way she would have never expected. However, this path of life seems less and less appealing to her as she grows into her later teenager years. Her main expectation for life is that she will marry her best friend, Martin. Set in the early 1990s in Crossmore, Ireland, Lucy is trying to stay on the beaten track. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 'Never in all my years of Christianity has there been talk of an angel like this.' This book was the most beautiful I have ever read. Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp. But only one can offer her real happiness. 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.įearful 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.īut 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. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend. 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. It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Selected as an Evening Standard 'one to watch in 2023'

Sunburn novel