Sunburn
Chloe Michelle Howarth’s coming-of-age novel Sunburn simmers with first love, confusion, and quiet rebellion in sun-drenched 1990s Ireland.
Lucy, a restless teenager, lives in Crossmore, Ireland, where “motherhood is the nearest thing to an inherited career” and rigid values govern the community. Her mother’s loud conservatism further steers Lucy toward a coerced future—one marked by meekness. When her close friendship with Susannah evolves into a charged romance the summer before college, Lucy grapples with the obsessive and overwhelming nature of her forbidden longing.
Most of the story is set in 1992, when homosexuality was criminalized in Ireland, extending Lucy’s experience to a broader atmosphere of moral policing: “This is not a forgiving place. The fear of it takes me over. It takes us all over.” Thus, the pair’s romantic pursuit is personal and political—an implicit rebuke of how systemic control shapes identity. As the novel spans her life from age fifteen to twenty, Lucy teeters between tightening her fragile grip on societal norms or self-acceptance.
Lucy’s narration is a poetic victory, fueled by intense, penetrating prose that captures the collision of adolescent emotion from being “pulled in two very different directions.” Her dialogue with others is spare, keeping the focus on her internal world, where unspoken tensions and festered resentments erupt in her monologues. The letters between her and Susannah, peppered throughout each chapter, pulse with subtext and mirror Lucy’s struggle to articulate the truth about her sexuality. Yet by the story’s end, Lucy’s voice matures, offering a reckoning that embraces emotional truth over the hollow comfort of conformity. The backmatter includes reading group questions that probe the book’s themes and character dynamics.
A poignant, slow-burning portrait of queer youth, Sunburn follows a teenage girl’s navigation of desire, identity, and the cost of repression.
Reviewed by
Brooke Shannon
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
