SUNBURN

An Irish teen grapples with her identity in this queer coming-of-age story.

It’s the summer of 1989 in the small village of Crossmore, and 15-year-old Lucy can’t stop staring at her friend Susannah O’Shea’s mouth. Susannah is gossiping and gobbling down a hamburger and Lucy longs to be “the microbes in the beef that her body seeks and destroys if it meant she would be paying me even the slightest bit of attention. The warmth and the wet of her mouth.” Surely this is just run-of-the-mill teenage girl friendship stuff, right? Lucy is desperate to believe that lie and ignore her budding sexuality until it’s clear that Susannah feels the same way. From there the two embark on a covert, tense, and loving relationship—Susannah wants them to come out and Lucy is desperate to remain accepted by her mother and close friends. Meanwhile, Lucy’s best friend, Martin Burke, has made his feelings for her too plain to ignore, and Lucy is tempted by this far-more-comfortable path in life. Lucy, whose love for her hometown does not wane even as it threatens to reject her, spends the next several years trying to decide whether she can sacrifice living as her authentic self and survive a life of convention. The pacing feels off for much of the novel, with certain scenes dominating pages and then months going by in a clause. But the book is at its most charming as Howarth explores the complex bonds of female friendship between Lucy and her crew, and ultimately Lucy and Susannah’s love story is absolutely gripping.

A romantic, funny, and painful exploration of the cost of being true to yourself.