I liked a lot of the pieces of this novel, but overall it didn't really wow me. I really liked the main character (nicknamed Sunshine) and the kind of rambly voice McKinley gave her--it felt authentic to her personality. I also liked how Sunshine wasn't always likable and how she described her job as a baker. The fantasy world was pretty cool and unique, although it annoyed me when McKinley used Sunshine to just info dump about the world (she's supposed to be super interested in the "Others" aka paranormal creatures so she knows a lot of stuff about them). It just felt like lazy writing, and it took me out of the story. I also wished the pace was a little brisker. Oh yeah since I haven't mentioned it, there are vampires and stuff in here.

I look forward to this season every year because it means I get to reread SUNSHINE. This is one of my few solid seasonal reads. I revisit it every year for so many reasons. Because it originally came out in October. Because it absolutely encapsulates autumn for me. And Halloween, of course, what with all the vampires and the midnight outings and the smell of fallen leaves and cinnamon rolls in the air. And because it's just one of the biggest Angie books there is. I remember being almost apoplectic with excitement when I heard Robin McKinley was writing a vampire novel. The whole notion filled me with tingles. And imagine how happy I was when it turned out to be better than I could ever have imagined. I know people have strong feelings on this book, one way or the other, and it's certainly not your run-of-the-mill urban fantasy (thank heavens for that). But for those who love feisty girls with thoughts of their own, ugly vampires with developing senses of humor, and wonderfully rich, dense, smart writing, this book may very well have your name on it. As for me, I bought it the day it came out (almost exactly eight years ago). I took it home and read it aloud with DH. And to this day favorite passages and scenes come up in our daily conversation. So as Halloween approaches, a review of my very favorite spooky read.

A side note: I'm not even slightly embarrassed to admit I own all three U.S. editions. If a new edition of SUNSHINE comes out, I buy it. End of story. It helps that they're all so very pretty. If pressed, I will admit that the original hardcover with the chandelier is my favorite. But I adore all three. And the important thing is that they're there. On my shelves. So that when the urge arises, I can take them out and stroke them and know that they're there and that they're loved. I know. But like I said--not even a little embarrassed.

It was a dumb thing to do but it wasn't that dumb. There hadn't been any trouble out at the lake in years. And it was so exquisitely far from the rest of my life.

These opening lines set the scene. Sunshine just wanted some solitude. Just a little time away from the strange and chaotic life she leads as the head baker at Charlie's and as her mother's daughter. She gets up every morning at the butt crack of dawn to get the dough going for her famous Cinnamon Rolls as Big as Your Head. And for Sunshine's Killer Zebras. And for Bitter Chocolate Death. And any number of awesome, original desserts and pastries she whips up on a daily basis at Charlie's--her stepfather's diner. She gets up and fights another round with her overprotective, obsessive mother. She gets up and goes out with her former soldier/reformed biker/cook boyfriend Mel. She gets up and gets through another day in New Arcadia--one of the few remaining spots that wasn't utterly demolished by the Voodoo Wars. And all she wanted was a moment alone in a peaceful place. So she drove out to the lake to sit. And that's when they came. And that's where they got her. As everybody knows, you don't hear them coming. Not when they're vampires. And you don't come back either. But Sunshine does come back after her extended and terrifying encounter with one vampire Constantine. She comes back and comes home. But. Even though she's home once more, nothing is the same. For all her surviving the encounter, she may not survive living with herself after.

Sunshine is one of those sarcastic, supremely set-in-her-ways tough girls that I seem to live for. The girl holds my heart in her flour-dusted hands. And because she is rendered in Robin McKinley's trademark prose, she's even more quirky and meandering and tangentially-inclined than those girls usually are. The tangents and meanderings bother some readers, I understand. If long internal monologues aren't your cup of tea, then they're not your cup of tea. But nobody can say that Ms. McKinley didn't go all-out hardcore when she sat down to write an urban fantasy. Because she did. And I love SUNSHINE with the fierce kind of love I reserve for those characters and stories that take no prisoners and make no apologies. I knew I would love Sunshine herself on page two when she set out to describe her stepfather.

Charlie is one of the big good guys in my universe.

There's so much fight and heart in that simple statement. Her relationship with Charlie is a highlight of the book, as he took her in as his own, gave her a job and a way out, and understood her when her mother could only scream. The way she introduced him made me love her. Many of Rae's rambling monologues include wry, self-effacing asides that always make me grin. For example:

I didn't want to know that the monster that lived under your bed when you were a kid not only really is there but used to have a few beers with your dad.

Set against the backdrop of almost certain doom, these barbs of humor secured my affection the way nothing else could have. I laugh a lot when I read SUNSHINE. I also shiver deliciously with fear. Which brings us to Con. As if Sunshine wasn't enough, Robin McKinley had to go and write Con--a vampire as far removed from the sexy-sparkly variety as is inhumanly possible. I really don't know of any other author who could make me fall in love with a vampire with skin the color of old mushrooms and a voice that unhinges your spine. But fall in love with Con I did. Or, more precisely, fall in love with the unlikely alliance of Sunshine-and-Con I did. It is this unprecedented friendship between human and vampire that is the real heart of the book. And it is made more believable (and much more valuable) by the lengths to which the author goes to to display how antithetical, how other, they are from one another. These two are not drawn together by attraction or random circumstance. They are bound together by the will to survive, by the refusal to live at the expense of another life, and by a slow-simmering, if uncomfortable, mutual admiration. The combination of Sunshine's jittery rambles and Con's remote and ominous silences gets me every time. As does the smart, knotty writing, Sunshine's passion for what she does, and the wonderful, wonderful restraint exercised to let the story unfold in its own way. Every time I read it, I find extra nuance and sympathy. And a perfect ending. As only she knows how to write them. This book, you guys. This best of all combinations of fairy tale, urban fantasy, and horror story. Neil Gaiman notably described it as "pretty much perfect," and I have to concur. I never tire of it. It's October once more, and I'm feeling that familiar SUNSHINE pull. Which copy shall I read this time?

It only got 2 stars because I liked the beginning. The idea of the book was good, who doesn't like a good vampire book. But then it just sort of rambled on and on and I got lost. To many details, too many stray thoughts that didn't matter. Towards the end I was just sort of skipping so I could have closure - and then it didn't even end the way I would have liked. Plus there is a completely inappropriate scene which I didn't appreciate. My advice - skip this one. . .

Promises of a different type of vampire story, glowing reviews including an awesome blurb by Neil Gaiman and an intriguing plot pretty much suckered me into buying this book for $1.99 on Kindle. Unfortunately, the best I can say about this is book is, “Meh”. Apparently, I missed the mark and only finished because it counted for a challenge.

Sunshine is touted as a quirky and interesting character, but she is just like all the other Mary Sue’s out there. She’s a hot-ish girl that bakes for a living, has a motorcycle riding boyfriend, seems to have 1 friend and oh yeah, happens to have an untapped, extremely powerful magical side to her…of course. Other than the magical side and her extreme love of baking cinnamon rolls there was nothing to differentiate her from the millions of other vampire heroines. The story gets interesting once Sunshine is kidnapped by vampires, but this is short-lived as the plot quickly disintegrates into a rambling, info-dumbing narrative. Maybe it could have worked if told from third person perspective, but instead we only have Sunshine’s first person perspective. Being in Sunshine’s head was sometimes brutal. She’s repetitive and plays the Captain Obvious card one too many times. It made me hate first person, especially because her perspective made the climax so damn anticlimactic.

As for the world building, again “meh.” I see many people talking about the world building and how this is a great example, but I heartedly disagree. The world is interesting and different. It’s like almost dystopian with other worldly beings (weres, vampires, daemons, angels, etc.) coexisting alongside humans. But again, too much rambling narrative and not enough showing. I wanted to know more about the Voodoo Wars and how this world came to be. Instead, we get a lot of info-dumping with a lot of made up words (blinks for dollars, globe-net for internet). Save your icing and give me the cake, dammit!

As for the Beauty and the Beast aspect that is showing up in some of the reviews…ugh. This wasn’t a romance by any means. There is a connection between the two characters and potential for there to be a romance, but it’s never developed. I can’t really call this a clean read either. There is an out of the blue, intense, potential sex scene that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. One minute Sunshine is repulsed by vampires and the next she is completely pissed off because she gets rejected by one. According to her, her “c*nt is going to explode,” so to hell with the stable and understanding motorcycle boyfriend who conveniently gets forgotten for the vampire. I’m not a prude by any means but I just can’t with the messy relationships, even more so when it doesn’t make sense.

So yeah, not sure what Gaiman or the other reviewers were thinking when they read this one, but this was not for me.

An odd, odd vampire urban fantasy. Equally odd is how I feel, which is part enjoyment, part confusion. There’s a lingering dissatisfaction, of an unfinished business. That perhaps author Robin McKinley got tired of it, or couldn’t commit to an ending, or left room for a sequel. Yet, I can’t see myself enjoying more of it, like a sequel, of what has already been offered in Sunshine. Not another incessant, meandering monologue, not another description of baking cinnamon buns for me. Given her reputation, as I’ve learnt, no sequel awaits anyway.

Yet, yet, I do want to read a sequel having been reeled in like a fish flopping on a fishing line. Hooked, and admiring the fresh view above water. There’s wonderful flow in McKinley’s writing, in describing the relationship between a human and her vampire, and how the magic is shimmering beneath the surface with hints intruding into everyday life. Creative energy seems ready to burst through in every direction, like so much needs to be written, but only so many words can be allowed. This normal, not-normal, world is inventive, original, full of possibilities, sensual even. The characters may not be attractive or heroic, but McKinley makes you care not a whit about that, but instead examines meaningful facets of human life.

Sunshine sits in that space where uniqueness is still praised but only just so. 3.5 stars rounded up.


[* Awards: Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature (2004)
Nov 2022, other awards: https://www.sfwa.org/2022/11/28/robin...]

1/12/25 - one of the best things about being sick in bed, but still able to concentrate, is that I allowed myself to just lie in bed and read. So, I read Sunshine in just a few days and loved it even more. I love Sunshine and I love Con and I love the coffeehouse and the whole world and would really, really, really like another book in this world. Okay, Ms. Amazing McKinley? ‘K thanks! XO

2019 - I honestly don't know what happened the first time I read this, but I must have not been in my right mind, because this is a fabulous novel - the world-building! the characters! - my goodness, I didn't want it to end and I couldn't put it down. I've always loved Robin McKinley's utterly original inventiveness and this book was no exception. Why do I not have other books in this universe? Why have I not been rereading this delight every year? Where the hell are my damn cinnamon rolls?

OK. I don't get it. I really don't. I see a lot of people, who I USUALLY agree with, giving this book 4 or 5 stars, so I'm willing to admit that it might just be me.

I will start from the beginning. The narrator was god-awful. Honestly. I know that there is an auditioning type of process for a lot of audiobooks, so I cannot help but wonder how we landed on a 60 year old lady to narrate a twenty-something young woman. Laural Merlington has to be the worst narrator that I have ever heard, and I listen to my Kindle Keyboards robotic narration. She literally voiced the main character as a pathetic, whiny, 9 year old. Any time Sunshine was scared, the voice became so intolerable, it would literally send me into a rage. This performance was bad enough that I will not be buying anything else she narrates.

Now for the actual book: I think Sunshine is pathetic and an utterly useless protagonist. There, I said it. I’m sorry. Please don’t flame me, it’s just my opinion. She is so whiney, it’s just constant, and she is just so helpless and hapless. I never felt that there was much character growth, and I made it to all but the last 2 and a half hours of audio before I finally gave in. I felt that the world creation felt forced- I enjoyed some things, the SOF, the dark spots, etc, but having to be reminded that dollars are called “blinks” etc. just felt like the author didn’t trust me to understand that shit-had-gone-down. And the Author LOVES to remind the reader, did you know Sunshine worked in a bakery? A family run bakery? Because if you forgot for more than half a page you were reminded. Frequently it didn’t feel like we were harkening back, because I did enjoy the cupcake and chocolate death metaphors, more often it just felt like the author honestly didn’t trust that I would remember Sunshine didn’t have much of a life, because she worked full time in a bakery. And the sex scenes, I don’t mind sex scenes, they aren’t my favorite because I feel like often the authors are uncomfortable with what they are writing, but in this case it was just so obvious and, I don’t know, stupid? (It didn’t help that it was being narrated by an old lady that was trying to sound young, and instead sounded like a child). I just felt that it could have been done better, with more tact, and with more heat! I mean, we keep hearing that the vamps look dead, that she is repulsed by him, she hasn’t had a single consistent thought about him, but all the sudden she is full of feelings … and trying to get full of something else *nudge nudge* wink wink*

Any ways, that was a lot of a rant, but that’s basically how I felt this book was written. Someone ranting about a bakery with a side of fantasy. The basis for an interesting book is there, but in the end I felt as though I was being drug, kicking and screaming, just like Sunshine, through a story that fell flat and felt listless to me.

I enjoyed this book a lot.

My problem with it is that is hard to read, it has excessive amounts of unnecessary information, but the story and the connection between the characters is so strong and unconventional that is worth pushing through it.

The tension that the writer creates between Sunshine and Con is incredible, I just wished there had been more about their relationship; I want more about Sunshine and Con together!

I definitely wish there was a sequel, in fact I can't believe there isn't! it's like a cruel joke, not funny at all.

since joel is being a slowpoke, i am going to write this review before i forget everything i was/am thinking about it and it gets lost in too-many-books-past.

yeah, so i had no idea this book was about vampires.

but, karen, you have voted for both elizabeth and mariel's review of this book, surely you read reviews before you vote!! surely you don't just "insta-vote" and RUIN goodreads.com for the rest of us???

yeah, yeah, yeah.

to be fair, i did read elizabeth's review but it was ages ago, when i had no intention of ever reading this book, so i just enjoyed her writing without absorbing the details, and the book itself went "whhhooosshh" outta my brain. and mariel. well, mariel is a very special brand of reviewer, and i think she only said "vampire" one time in her very convoluted but awesome review.

i mixed this up in my head with the other fantasy books i have been commanded to read, and i thought this was another beauty and the beast retelling. imagine my confusion when the vampires showed up to crash the party.and i liked it, but i did not get out of it what everyone else seems to have gotten from it. this is like a seminal work to the fantasy-lovers and they swoon when it is mentioned.

so what am i missing??

this is intended as a genuine question because i have never read/seen any of it, but is this what true blood is like?? this is the sense i get - southern location, accepted and casual reactions to the supernatural mingling with humankind, central woman straddling two worlds and looking good doing it. is this a fair assessment?? i am just curious if this book was an inspiration to a young(er) charlaine harris, or if this is just a common theme in fantasy novels.

so i am going to talk about genre fiction briefly, as someone who does not read much genre fiction, because i just have some questions/observations.and you will correct me if i am totally off base.

fantasy novels, including this one, seem to revolve around a strong central female character and several "helper" male characters who don't have much power, but work to protect or nurture the female. in this book, she does have a boyfriend, but he is more symbolic, like something for her to rub her sexuality against.he can physically protect her with his might, but he is really only there to give her what she needs and not ask unpleasant questions, fading into the background so she can have guilt-free near-relations with supernatural beings. and she pretty much does see him as a means to an end, as she freely confesses. she is glad that he doesn't ask her the questions (which, considering what is going on all around her, and the behavioral and physical changes that are happening to her, would be pretty natural for him to ask) but she sees his presence as comforting and his "respect" for her emotional reticence as a mark in his favor. he is the comfiest of sweaters (the garment), but no one has a conversation with a sweater.

(this is totally different from high or epic fantasy, which i gather is pretty misogynistic and rapey.)

now, if this was a romance novel, the characters' dynamics would be all different.in romance novels, (the few i have read) women seem to give up all their agency to be swept away by something larger than themselves, they wouldn't be taking charge and we all know what happens when a woman meets a vampire in a romance novel.



she becomes a lesbian rock star, of course...

so i guess i can see how this book would appeal to self-possessed women more than the romance-novel variety...

but the sentences were kind of killing me:

My mother, who would have loved to forbid these visits—when Mom goes off someone, she goes off comprehensively, and when she went off my dad she went off his entire family, excepting me, whom she equally passionately demanded to keep—didn't, but the result of her not-very-successfully restrained unease and disapproval made those trips out to the lake more of an adventure than they might otherwise have been, at least in the beginning.

and

The Cinnamon Roll Queen wasn't going to be bought off by a fast food hamburger—supposing I ate hamburgers, which I didn't, and after tonight, even if I had, id've given them up—but Prime Time was a twenty-four-hour gourmet deli.

aggg - it makes me exhausted unpacking those sentences. it shouldn't take this much rereading to make sense of a vampire novel, should it?other than that - i did enjoy all of the baking. i have some questions about the nature of sunshine's talents, and how with her work schedule, she would ever ever see the daylight, and i was very disappointed to have been royally teased with all this talk of her paternal grandmother and her badass dad, and they don't show up in any significant way?? come on!! i need sorcerers!! so unfair

awesome librarian character a plus...
not really a review, but some things that have been bouncing around in my head since i finished this like 8 books ago. i blame joel!! joel is the problem with goodreads.com!

come to my blog!

Gah, I love this book so much, it's ridiculous! It gives me the same type of feels that I get from The Hunger Games series.

Here is a useful tip, should you ever find yourself face-to-face with a vampire: they are living corpses that eat people. They are not sun-sparkling, abstinent forever-teens. Staying inside all day and being forced to personally kill all of your food doesn't bode well for your mental health (not to mention the fact that you have been alive so long, you've had to re-buy all your Beatles albums in like five different formats).

Robin McKinley gets this the way Stephanie Meyer or even, sometimes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, don't -- generally, it is safe to say, vampires aren't creatures whose pictures you want to pin up in your locker. Yes, authors can rewrite the rules of vampirism all they want to make them easy to romanticize (I have a soul! Oh yeah? We'll I'm vegetarian), but it all still comes down to A) creatures of the night B) part of a race that, by and large, views humans as walking ketchup dispensers C) unflattering complexions. In Sunshine, the vampires are gross. They look like what they are, which is, if you will remember, dead. They are also rightly feared by the populace, but that might have more to do with the role they played in the vaguely defined Voodoo Wars that ravaged society some years before, to the point where what seems like a pretty nondescript small city is now the eighth largest remaining population in the U.S. In short, vampires: not very nice.

And yet, there's always the special one. But if Sunshine (not her real name, thankfully) can be the Buffy who befriends a vampire, at least she is a total screw-up in every other way (and I mean more of a screw-up than just that she pretends to trip on things and makes too many boys fall in love with her). She gives her mom hell. She barely graduated from high school. She dates a guy with too many tattoos. She's kind of a bitch. She's flawed, and fun to read about, which is important, because she's our narrator. But she is special, with an unknown magical heritage that saves her ass when she's kidnapped by bloodsuckers and chained up in a room with one of them. This turns out to be Constantine, who is that Special Vampire who doesn't eat people, but at least he's still pretty disgusting, as romantic heroes go. The no heartbeat thing would get pretty weird. Also the bathing in his blood, but that comes later.

In many ways, this is a Twilight-y book, and you can see why the publisher decided to repackage it in a sparkly teen edition, even though it is about adult characters who actually screw instead of lying in fields and gazing longingly at one another: There's a special girl. There's a vampire. There is a little bit of romance (though Sunshine has the good sense to be freaked out about it, and, at least, never describes anyone's beautiful chest). Also in both books nothing happens for long stretches of time, only to rush through an action-packed climax in just a few pages. (Oh, I forgot, both also involve scenes of googling and message board reading, which still isn't all that interesting.) The difference is that Robin McKinley can write, and instead of filling her pages with repetition and day-to-day mundanities (new word!), she creates a fun cast of supporting characters at the bakery where Sunshine works (I could almost write an entire separate review about the role baking plays in this book, but I didn't want to make anyone hungry) and puts real thought into the way you might react to a traumatic experience like almost being eaten. Like, you might throw yourself back into your work (mmm, cinnamon rolls!) even as you struggled to cope with the fallout, alienating your friends and loved ones in the bargain.

This is a really entertaining book that slowed down just a little too much in the middle for me, but it is much, much better than a phrase like "vampire romance" might imply. In a parallel dimension, this book is the famous one, and Stephanie Meyer, bless her heart, is selling her books to Kindle owners on Amazon, because writing is a nice little hobby but why do it full time when you are so bad at it?

Man, I really didn't mean to rag on Twilight so much. Sorry about that.

(Oh, p.s. to Karen -- sorry for failing at that whole tandem review thing. We can just pretend I wrote this a week ago.)

When I picked up Sunshine for the first time and realized that Robin McKinley had written a vampire novel, I was almost horrified: it seemed a far cry from Damar and retold fairy tales, and vampire novels are certainly not usually my thing. But McKinley is easily one of my top ten favorite writers, so I sat down with it one night and got so sucked into it (pardon the pun) that I stayed up most of the night finishing it (which is a bigger deal than it used to be, with a toddler who gets up when he feels like it rather than when I do). On subsequent rereads, I've managed to avoid staying up all night, but it's been a real test of my willpower.



Sunshine is set in an alternate universe, where there are vampires, demons, and weres as well as humans, those who survived the Voodoo Wars but are now threatened by the increase in the vampire population. Rae Seddon, a baker nicknamed "Sunshine" for her affinity for sunlight, has an unusual interest in the Others, but no real contact with them...until the night she's kidnapped by a group of vampires. Her fellow prisoner is also a vampire, and their joint captivity creates an uneasy alliance. Even after their escape, Sunshine and Con are still linked, and Sunshine (another of McKinley's typically strong, practical heroines) discovers more about her world, her past, and her own powers as she and Con work together to defeat the vampire who captured them.



McKinley excels at creating richly detailed worlds, and she's done that again with Sunshine. The world is like ours in many respects (Sunshine describes something at one point as "half Quasimodo, half Borg"), but chillingly different in others -- in one memorable passage, Sunshine wonders about whether phoenixes exist: "I think the phoenix has at least a fifty-fifty chance of being true, because it's nasty. What this world doesn't have is the three-wishes, go-to-the-ball-and-meet-your-prince, happily-ever-after kind of magic. We have all the mangling and malevolent kinds. Who invented this system?" Con himself is Other: not just a human with long teeth, he is inhuman, which makes Sunshine's unwilling attraction to him particularly intriguing (and yet another of McKinley's variations on the "Beauty and the Beast" theme, which she makes even more apparent by having Sunshine retell the fairy tale to Con during their imprisonment).



Altogether, Sunshine is an unusual outing for McKinley in its subject matter and world, but her wonderful writing, worldbuilding, and characterization are fully evident and as compelling as ever. Oh, and you might want to have a couple of good cinnamon rolls lying around, because believe me, you'll be hungry for them by the time you're done with the book (I wish McKinley had included Sunshine's recipe for those).