love story Archives - Better Than Dreams

One night Rae feels like she needs to get away from everyone, including her family and boyfriend, and have some space to think, so she goes out for a drive by the lake. There she is kidnapped by a group of vampires. They take her to a heavily guarded house by the lake and put her in a room with another vampire, who is chained to the wall, yet able to reach her. Rae is clearly meant to be food, so she is surprised when the vampire doesn’t devour her immediately, and instead asks her to talk to him. But he isn’t like other vampires, and, it turns out, Rae isn’t like other humans either.

Sunshine is a very strange book to review. I enjoyed it immensely but was also really annoyed by it! The plot is quite an unusual one as the bulk of the story takes place after Rae escapes the vampires and explores the effect this has on her life. Though she claims that she can’t remember anything, and tries to convince herself that life will continue as normal, supernatural law enforcement officials that she has known all her life start turning their attention to her, eager to find out what happened that night. Her mother starts leaving protection charms around. And the vampire that she was held prisoner with hasn’t disappeared either.

There’s a lot of detail in this book. Rae goes off on a lot of tangents, which some readers don’t like, but I loved it. I really enjoyed all the different elements that were brought into the story. The world building and characterisation was excellent and I was desperate to find out what Rae would do and what would be revealed about each character in the end.

And then it just stops.

And not in the first-book-in-a-series cliffhanger kind of way.

At The End of the story, almost nothing has been explained, let alone resolved. The one major relationship has developed, but that’s it.

It’s extremely frustrating. It seems like there is so much interesting material left to explore, but to the author, the most interesting part, that relationship, has developed, so that’s the end of the book. To her it’s a love story, but to me, it could have been a lot of other things as well. It could have been an epic about the end of the world. It could have been the best urban fantasy series I’d ever had the privilege of reading.

I respect the right of the author, who is extremely talented, to tell the story she wants to tell. But at the same time I can emphasise with all those people who find Sunshine annoyingly long-winded. I loved the detail, but when most of it turns out to have no bearing on the ending, it seems unnecessary.

Would I recommend Sunshine? Yes, if you love urban fantasy and like vampires to be properly terrifying, and if you want to see some really interesting ideas, or if you enjoy reading about unusual romantic relationships. But if you like to have mysteries explained, don’t get your hopes up about the ending.

I would more broadly recommend Robin McKinley’s Spindle’s End, which is also full of interesting characters but has a much tighter ending. I’ve also read Beauty, which is extremely popular, but I didn’t like it as much as Spindle’s End.

This is my sixteenth Top Ten Tuesday post! Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. I have taken a rather broad view of this topic, choosing to pick my favourite romances within books, rather than my favourite romantic novels, because I don’t read many books that could be simply classed as romantic novels. I then narrowed it down by choosing only books that I’ve previously reviewed. Enjoy!

Photo by Katerha

Top Ten Favourite Romances

1. Jeane Smith and Michael Lee from Adorkable, by Sarra Manning – Girl dislikes everything boy represents, boy cannot understand girl at all. But their lust for each other starts to overpower their initial reluctance.

2. Ruby and Noel from the Ruby Oliver Quartet, by E. Lockhart – because they’re completely adorable, as frustrating and confused as they can sometimes be.

3. Val and Ravus, from Valiant, by Holly Black – the only Beauty and the Beast retelling that I have read so far that didn’t stink of Stockholm Syndrome, and Val kicks butt.

4. Mia and Adam, from If I Stay and Where She Went, by Gayle Forman – because before the accident they were such a vomitously cute couple, and they proved their love after things got all, well, car crashy.

5. Riley and Dylan, from Everything Beautiful, by Simmone Howell – two unconventional teenagers that meet at Christian summer camp, and go on to combine an adventure with their unusual romance.

6. Naomi and Will, from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, by Gabrielle Zevin – because he loves her so patiently, even though she is afraid of her feelings.

7. Nicola and Battle, from Empress of the World, by Sara Ryan – because of Nicola’s journey towards self-discovery, and the open ending.

8. Anthea and Robin, from Girl Meets Boy, by Ali Smith – First non-YA book on the list! This is a short book mainly about a) two sisters with very different ways of seeing the world, b) gender, and c) love.

9. Ash and Kaisa, from Ash, by Malinda Lo – hello, slow burn.

10. Tom and The Perfectionist, from All My Friends Are Superheroes, by Andrew Kaufman – I’m worried that anything I could write here would spoil your enjoyment of this book. So just go read it.

Honourable mentions to some of my other favourite fictional couples: Aria and Perry from Under the Never Sky, Allie and Carter from Night School, Flora and Charles from Cold Comfort Farm (it’s okay that he’s her cousin because it’s a satire, right?), Heather and Morag from The Good Fairies of New York, Frankie Landau-Banks and pranks, Sam from Slam and maturity, everyone and everyone in How I Paid For College, Maria and Michael from Roswell (hated Max and Liz on rewatch, but Maria and Michael forever!!!1one), Seth and Summer from The OC (in honour of my sister), and obviously, Edie and Dylan from the Diary of a Crush books.

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