It’s been several years since I read this, but the title came across my feed this morning, and I smiled as I thought of it. The thing I remember most about it is the warm feeling McKinley built around the main character as she described her job in the bakery. I loved the atmosphere I encountered at the start, and although I don’t remember a whole lot of details besides that, I would definitely recommend this to vampire fans who are looking for something original.

Did Not Finish--51 percent.

This book broke me. It had all of my not favorite things to wade through as a reader. We had endless information dumps, random monologuing, and just random pages of the main character talking/remembering something and then we jump back to the "present" where someone is asking her a freaking question. I can't even tell you anything except this has vampires (or suckers), weres, and demons. And I guess magical families? I don't even know people. This was terrible. And people saying this screamed for a second book. It did not.

"Sunshine" follows a baker named Rae, also called Sunshine (hence the title) who ends up kidnapped by a bunch of vampires in order to have another vampire feed on her. And from that instance we have Rae remember her grandmother and a game they used to play and you know what, go look up the book synopsis. I don't even have the energy I need to fake caring about what this book was about.

Rae was just a walking plot point. I can't even talk about her really. She's all over the place and McKinley did not do a good job with developing her through the 51 percent of the book I read. I can tell you that she loves sunshine. Has an unhealthy relationship with her mom (who we never hear talk or speak to her since they are constantly beefing) and has a boyfriend named Mel. And Rae loves to just talk and provide information dumps.

Everyone else is just there. They are asking questions or explaining things and it's to provide context and information to us dear readers, but it's done in such a bad way. I can only recall one book whose world building was this bad for me and that was Divergent.

The writing was painful. There's very little dialogue happening.

The flow was awful. I hit part three at about 47 percent and felt despair. This book felt endless.

The setting is a world where humans know about vampires, weres, demons. There seems to be arbitrary rules/laws going on and you get to read about them all. There's also a so called War that happened, but apparently no one won? I don't even know. There's a constant discussion of the Special Other Forces (SOF) so I hope you like seeing that acronym over and over again.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2021, "Vampires" square.

Okay, so I seriously pondered over whether to give this book three stars or four. In the end, I DID enjoy it so I felt generous and gave it four, but it's not without its faults.

Once, when I was a little kid, my parents bought me my favourite ice cream. There's actually only one kind of ice cream that I actually like and that's mint choc chip. Only they bought this MASSIVE bowl of it with a banana in it and extra chocolate sauce. I can only guess that they'd finally decided to slowly kill me via diabetes, cholesterol and blood-pressure, and be rid of my annoying, argumentative, five-year-old ways.

I can promise that it almost worked and they were almost home free except they'd miscalculated one thing - my short attention span. Sure the ice cream was delicious and kept me entertained but there was just so much of it and the mint ice cream was just a little too much in ratio to the choc chip that I like and even the chocolate sauce couldn't entirely keep my concentration.

Well, Sunshine is a bit like that. It's good. It's really good. It's a vampire novel so it's pretty much RIGHT up my alley too and so by definition I should have really enjoyed this book.

There was really just the problem that there was too much useless narrative in ratio to the action and suspense. Sunshine would start babbling about some inane facet of life that had NOTHING to do with the story and doesn't really add anything to it. Now, if this was world building for a future novel I could have forgiven it, but I have heard, rather mournfully, that there will be no more to this series and that makes me very annoyed. Like when I lost interest in my mint choc chip ice cream at one interval and my evil parents had it whisked away by an annoyed waitress (I'll have my revenge one day!)

So whilst I enjoyed much of the book, I found myself falling asleep a lot because it would launch into these long stories like my 80 year old grandma does when you ask her how her day was.

Don't even get me started on how UNRESOLVED the end was. There were things I REALLY wanted to know. There were certain sexy scenes I REALLY wanted to read and there was information and intrigue that was left dangling! It's infuriating!

One good praise I would like to make for Sunshine is the reversal in a genre of a practice that baffles me. I've complained before that often in YA books, swearing and sex between the main characters doesn't really happen.

Yet rape and violence is often described and occurs, sometimes rather graphically.

Well, in this book the main character has sex with her long time boyfriend and it's a sweet nonevent - these positive and healthy examples of sex are good! Can we have more caring and loving and healthy relationships displayed for our youth like this, please?

There is one particular swearword I wished the book hadn't used (it starts with C and rhymes with bunt... figure it out.)

I really hate that word. But the two mentions of dick are cool with me - except Robin Cockblocking McKinley is a cockblocking temptress of doom and if you have read this book then you'll know why I say this!

Can someone explain to me why she is not continuing with Sunshine and Con? Please? Why? Why build all this world and have all this and cockblock us (Yes! That's exactly what you did!) only to leave us hanging? It's just rude. At this point I really wouldn't mind what would end out to be the literary equivalent of a pityfuck just to satisfy me and tie up all the freakin' loose ends!

Finally, I say I enjoyed this book. I did. Like my ice cream, it was just the kind of thing I liked. Too bad there was so much of it and at times it became work just to get through it and finally finish it. Over all, it was a really good serving of mint choc chip ice cream with a huge serving of cockblock.

I liked it, but I refuse to go on a date with Robin McKinley again unless she promises to put out.

3.5

What a frustrating book! On one side, this is an amazing read. McKinley paints a deeply complex and detailed world peopled by humans, weres, vampires, demons, and people who can wield magic. The feel is very much urban however, but one that has suffered wars and has not yet quite recovered. The author succeeds in conveying such depths that it is only too easy to immerse oneself.

Characters are also brilliantly portrayed, full of subtlety and ambiguity. Rae is very easy to like. Her seemingly simple life as a baker (yes, the descriptions of her baking are mouth-watering!) transforms into something else but nothing is as what it seems.

Additionally, the vampires in this story are nothing we have come used to expect. There is an alieness to them that makes them more than just 'Other' - somehow even repulsive.

So, what went wrong? Well, as much as I liked Rae, her narration ended up distancing me from the story. The first person in this instance becomes a kind of stream of consciousness. Usually I'm fine with this but here it made the narrative convoluted. This annoyed me to no end because otherwise I can see I would have loved this book.

Perhaps it is me after all... I may try to give Sunshine another go in a while.

Insufferably verbose - you can't go a full scene without McKinley interjecting with 6 pages of worldbuilding - and painfully overwritten. By the end of Part II, about 200 pages in (paperback ed.) we've had literally three (3) things happening, the rest of the page-time being dedicated to vapid dialogues, insipid characterization (I found telling this amorphous blob of secondary characters apart all but impossible), an overly-detailed worldbuilding that somehow still manages to come off as inconsistent and vague, and a frankly inexplicable obsession with the genetic makeup of supernatural creatures I'm pretty sure absolutely no one has, like, ever asked for.

The protagonist - called, variably, Raven or Rae or Sunshine: obviously she couldn't be your run-of-the-mill Lisa or Ashely because, and I hope for your sake you're receiving this mind-blowing piece of news while sitting down, SHE IS SPECIAL (but props to McKinley for coming up with not one, not two, but three equally absurd names for her, I guess?) kept addressing the readers directly for no reason I can fathom, save for the fact that the woman clearly suffers from a bad case of being incapable of shutting up ("Mind you..." Mind what, Raven-Rae-Sunshine? Mind what). Or possibly McKinley thought this is a cute literary quirk? *Shudders*

The book is also ridden by extremely uncomfortable jabs at people who suffer from addiction (according to McKinley covering yourself head to toe with mud and algae from the nearby lake will give you the distinctive appearance of a swamp monster drug addict) and mental health issues (ah, the early 2000s!) but the crown for Cringiest Moment of All goes to that time Raven-Rae-Sunshine's thoughts took a bizarre tangent that brought her to consider how "ugly people" are perceived as being more threatening than "beautiful people" (she also mentions "a study" to support this profound truth about human nature so this is clearly Scientific Stuff).

Whatever. Don't mind me, I'm extra cranky because most of my friends apparently really enjoyed this, and I am bitter, all right? I wanted in on the Sunshine love train too! But I just couldn't take this book seriously (McKinley didn't help any, what with using words like "globnet" for the internet, "blinks" for dollars, "thing-thralls" for folks subjugated by incubi/succubi, and "Carthaginian" and "Spartan" as, I kid you not, swear words).

Nah.

DNF. Calling it quits on page 213 of 475, I prefer my vampire novels more dark and sinister please. I’m just not connecting with this at all.

2.5 stars

What I can only assume is a superb April Fools joke by the book gods, my first themed book for April Singles turned out to be an actual Non-series book (if you aren't as obsessed with my life as I am, usually during this theme I laugh, groan, and joke how all the books I pick for this turn out to be actually in a series). What is wrong with this you ask? There is no way on earth this should be a contained to one freaking book story.

Don't believe me? Imagine if you will, if Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning had been a standalone. Don't just shrug and move on, GO THERE. Because I have been to that bellow to the book gods place thanks to this book.

This reminded me a lot of Moning's series, incredible created universe, first person pov from heroine who is young and not aware of her own power, plethora of characters who could be good or evil, a dark mysterious intriguing dude, and a will they or won't they. Oh, and there's Mel. Who is Mel you ask? He's our heroine's boyfriend, who is sweet, sexy, and affable. I know there is more to his story because of the clues we are given but I'll never really know, because STANDALONE.

If this reminded me of Darkfever so much, why only 2.5 stars? It has the addictive reading quality but oh boy is our first person pov heroine into rambling. She goes off on tangents, which sometimes have observational little life nuggets but mostly make you want to skim. There's also a feeling of being dizzily just dropped into the world and I spent most the beginning trying to understand who and what story the author was telling.

If you want your vampire stories a little darker, the vampires in this world definitely not of the sparkle quality and something a little off the beaten path, this would be a good pick. Just be prepared to gird your loins at how rambling the heroine can get. Also, did I mention the whole no series thing? 'Cause seriously, you'll probably live at least 2.4% of your life always wishing you could know if Pat is evil, who the Goddess of Evil truly is, and if Mel is Sunshine's Tree.

This story is magical but DARK magic because it will leave you feeling like you're in a straight jacket bouncing off padded walls crying and screaming to book gods about how you "Just need to know if Sunshine and Constantine bang!!"

Hmm. Where to start? This book was quite unique and strange. I love me a good vampire tale and this certainly was one- vampires are at the centre of the actions of the story. And yet...the point of the book seemed to be more about the world building. This was a fascinating world with many magics and part blood demons, ward makers and charm weavers, a special Others police force...
But while it was fascinating in places, the book seemed to be almost a long information dump. If this was the first in a series, this would make more sense, but Sunshine is a stand- alone. It was frustrating to me that we did not learn more about Constantine. He is alien, aloof, cold, as one might expect from a vampire and yet hard to get a handle on.
I thought Sunshine was a great character in an urban fantasy setting different to many others in tone as much as geography. The book felt wordy but this may have to do with my tiny print mass market paperback and my dodgy eyesight and not McKinley's writing!
Did I like this book? I don't know. Did I like reading another and different take on vampires? Very much.

Sunshine had all the elements of a great fantasy: a post-apocalyptic alternative world, where humans and the "others" - vampires, werevolves and demons - coexist in constant conflict. The main character, Sunshine, is kidnapped by a group of vampires and left with one of them, chained to the wall in a secluded gothic estate. The beginning is creepy and suspenseful. Too bad it's over after 50 pages.

I really disliked the protagonist, and it didn't help that the novel was narrated in the first person. There is very little dialogue in this book; everything is flooded by Sunshine's constant boring ramblings.
At the beginning she is introduced as a yet another Mary Sue who works in a bakery and has a biker boyfriend. But then it turns out she can do MAGIC. And lo and behold, she gains awesome magic powers which conveniently allow her to escape from danger and become the best magic user around. Constantine, the vampire with whom she teams up is over the top - he claims to not be able to stand moonlight but of course he can, and he can do so much more etc. Nauseating. To give the author credit, Constantine is an interesting character, but he's barely there.

Near the middle of the book there is a completely out of the blue sex scene, which is so out of character that it's impossible to be plausible. It's rendered with such pointless vulgarity ("my cunt was going to explode") that makes me wonder why it was even there? Was the author acting out her own fantasies? Hmm...

The story plods along at glacial speed, and all world building and information is conveyed through Sunshine's monologues, which form giant infodumps. The author constantly TELLS us about everything, and never SHOWS the world she has created. The information is not artfully woven into the narrative, but dumped on the reader with the subtlety of a falling safe.

Ultimately, I failed to care about anything or anyone in this novel. I finished it only to be fair to the text; too bad the text was not fair to me. It doesn't even read like a novel; more like tedious fan-fiction fantasy which includes a tomboy princess and vampires. Long on extruciatingly tedious filler, short on everything else. 500 pages could have been trimmed to 300. I do not recommend this book. What was Neil Gaiman thinking?

MY REVIEW ON MY BLOG

WARNING: Reading this book will make you crave a cinnamon roll before you're through! I lasted until about p 272 before I had to go out and get one.

I loved how immediately attached I became to Rae aka Sunshine. From the get-go I could relate to her stream of consciousness narration, her witty asides, and I enjoyed how she would tell important (for the purposes of plot and character investment on my part) pieces of backstory right in the middle of what was currently taking place.

Illustration of my point (Charlie is Rae's step-father and owner of the coffee shop where she is the cinnamon roll baker extraordinaire)

p 170 "Anything you want to talk about?" Charlie said in his best off-hand manner.
I though about it. Charlie ambled over and closed the bakery door. Doors don't get closed much at the coffeehouse, so when one is, you'd better not open it for anything less than a coachload of tourists who didn't book ahead, have forty-five minutes for lunch before they meet their guide at the Other Museum, which is a fifteen-minute coach ride away (it's only seven minutes on foot, but try to convince a coachload of tourist of that), they all want burgers and fries and won't look at the menu, we're not heavily into burgers so our grill is kind of small, and we don't do fries at all, except on special when they're not what burger eaters would call fries anyway.
Rae proceeds to tell the entire tourist-burger and fry-wanters' story before getting back into her conversation with Charlie.
LOVE IT!!

I had the most difficult time understanding what was happening with the magic and there were lots of amazing food descriptions, some roof sex and a HIGHLY UNEXPECTED usage of the c word. ROBIN MCKINLEY USED THE C WORD.

First time reading Robin McKinley. I have heard good things about her, but she struck me as a bit of a fanta-twee author. Anyway, Sunshine was on sale at Audible, and I like a good vampire story, so decided to check it out.

First, if I'd known about the romantic undercurrents, I'd have run screaming. Another vampire romance? Oh, hell no.

So this is another book that got to pleasantly surprise me because I didn't know enough to reject it outright.

"Sunshine" (the main character's nickname, and guess what, it's not meaningless) is just an ordinary 20-something slacker who works at a bakery. She decides to go down by the lake one evening, just to get away from it all, and is immediately captured by vampires.

Wait, what? Like, she knows about vampires? Yes. The details of the setting are not dumped on you all at once, or in expository prologues. Instead, we learn things a little at a time. This is not our world. This is an alternate world where magical creatures are real. Demons, weres, genies, angels, leprechauns, phoenixes, dragons, pretty much everything — and vampires.

The world avoids become Harry Potterish or silly because most of those creatures are only mentioned. Vampires are the only ones who figure into the plot. But we also learn that magic is real, and coexists with modern society, and this will become very significant.

So, Sunshine wakes up chained to a wall, with another vampire chained to a wall with her. Obviously she has been caught in the middle of some kind of vampire feud, and she's being dangled in front of the winning gang's captive as a snack. So she knows she's dead, because no one ever escapes from vampires.

And yet she does. And goes on to spend much of the book talking about baking and cinnamon rolls. Which was actually kind of neat, and made me hungry while listening.

This was actually a pretty good story, worldbuilding and vampires and all. The vamps are nasty critters, like vampires should be. Sunshine of course is special, and so is her vampire hottie, but it's a decent tale that seems to subvert a lot of the tropes you'd be expecting in this post-Twilight genre. Sunshine is actually pre-Twilight, which is too bad, since Sunshine, unlike Bella Swan, actually has a personality and does things.

Now, mind you, the book is still half contemporary fantasy/vampire story and half dark-undercurrents-of-hawt-brooding-sexuality between Broody McBiterperson and the ordinary young female protagonist. So, there is no way in hell it gets 5 stars from me because the suck factor is automatic. (Har har. Suck, vampires, gettit? I slay me.)



And stripping away the unconsummated sexing (the most graphic the book gets is when bad boy Constantine gives our heroine a serious case of blue... ladybits), the story is only okay, the worldbuilding interesting if unexceptional, and the writing decent.

So, this is a nice solid 3.5 star book. Which is pretty damn high for me to rate a vampire romance.

Now, in fairness, it's not so much a romance. Constantine is still a vampire. McKinley does a good job of making him enigmatic and mysterious. It seems he's an "ethical" vampire — the conflict that sparks the plot is between him and a more traditional "master vampire" who's of the pure dark and evil recreational torture and slaughter variety. But does Constantine still kill humans? It's definite that he has in the past, and it's not clear whether he now manages to feed without killing. So he's kind of like Dexter, an improbably moral sociopath who couldn't exist in real life. (I mean, aside from being a vampire...)

But he's sure got more going for him than Edward effing Cullen.

The target audience for this book is unquestionably the same target audience as Twilight, girls who get hot at the thought of a good-looking but super-dangerous predatory monster who only she in all the world is safe to be with.

However, I repeat: Sunshine actually does shit. And she bakes a mean cinnamon roll.