Facing the Sun is a young adult read about four teenage girls who experience changes during the summer.

I have to say that this was a bit difficult to read. There are four main characters and it was hard to keep up with each character. I normally do enjoy reading stories with multiple POV's but I just couldn't get into it because it was tough to keep up.

I did like the setting. The author did a good job of detailing the Bahamas. Really making you feel like you could be there and imagine what everything looked like.

I give Facing the Sun 3 stars. I really wish I could have loved this one but again the multiple perspectives were hard to follow.

Read but was not terribly memorable. I am clearing out the books published in 2020 from my "to review" shelf!

This was such a great book. Yes, I had a warm time trying to remember everyone’s name and who they were. I think it took me until I was 65% into the book to finally get an understanding of the personality. I don’t think it is any fault to the writer, or maybe it is… she could have gone with four characters, I guess. Either wait I did enjoy reading about all of them and I didn’t think any character was too much alike.

This was my first time reading Janice Lyn-Mather and I will for sure be reading more from her. I loved how she dealt with father-daughter themes, grieve, mental illness, trauma, identity and coming of age.

A really enjoyable read.

4stars
This book was written from the perspective of 4 different teen girls. That got confusing at times but overall the book was well written.
I loved the setting, The Bahamas and the beach, all the girls were well-developed characters. There was nothing I didn't like but also nothing that stood out to me.

I liked the idea of the story. However, it the present tense writing style was difficult for me to adjust to reading. I also thought there were too many characters and storylines to keep track of for one book.

I enjoyed this read - describing it as "sisterhood of the traveling pants set in the Caribbean" was very accurate. I like stories that have multiple characters and and narrators; however, it did take a while to be able to keep each story, conflict, and narrator straight. I look forward to adding this to my classroom library and giving it another read!

I wanted to read this by the publication date by the publisher just approved me too close to the date and my arc TBR is heavily stacked. I tried to get into this one because a Caribbean story about friends sounded so intriguing but I'm just not in the mood for it right now. I will return back to it to finish and give a proper review.

This book follows a group of four friends and we see all four girls' perspectives. It has a slow start and takes a while to dive into each girl's story and a potential conflict, which makes this read hard to get into, just by seventy pages. There are too many storylines about each girl and it's hard to keep track and distinguish who's speaking, like I kept forgetting who's pov it is now since it switched midchapter. The characters seem either a bit bland or too similar to me, and it's difficult to want to keep reading as nothing really interesting happens to spark my intrigue. The whole thing seems a bit too ambitious with way too much trying to happen at once. For example, just when a side starts to get interesting, things switch to another girl's and all that momentum falls flat. It seems like Eve and Nia are the natural standouts that I sort of see their perspective come alive, but that's about it. This book leaves out crucial family dynamics until about halfway through, so I had little clue to how anyone was actually related to one another. It's not holding my attention at all, which is a shame because everything about the summary seemed so engaging and like a Caribbean set "Sisterhood of the Traveling pants" read, however, with just one hundred pages left, this fell flat for me. It's just sort of a boring story without much action to hold my attention. It did have a good writing style, but the lackluster pace couldn't keep my attention.

3.5 stars

I really like the characters in this novel, but it took me a long time to distinguish them completely and become invested in their stories.

The four m.c.s have - at times - complicated friendships with each other and experience the same issues as most other young teens their age. Rather than connecting with the characters, I found myself remembering specific scenes or interactions. For me, there was too much jumping between the characters and not enough depth to grab on to in the beginning. I struggled a bit to figure out who was whom and how they related to each other.

While I did experience some frustrations and looser connections than I'd have liked throughout the first half of the novel, the pay off was solid. The narrative is clear, the relationships bear fruit, and the characters grow (or don't) in satisfying ways. Overall, this is a worthwhile read, but if I were to re-read this, I might consider being more methodical through the first couple of chapters for enhanced clarity.

I liked the characters in this book and how they were very steadfast friends who took care of and stood up for one another. I felt all their family backgrounds were different and some more intense than others.
It took me a bit to warm up to all the bouncing around in narration between the characters, but I found that I enjoyed it and enjoyed them once I got everyone straightened out.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

This book is described as “sisterhood of the traveling pants set in the Caribbean” and that is a very accurate depiction. As the girls friendships change and evolve so do they as they deal with overbearing parents, sex, love, honesty and the importance of having your friends by your side. Each girl had their own story and their own troubles, ones they aren’t even sharing with their dear friends, but as they work through their problems they come together as one.