I really, really, REALLY wanted to love this. A friend recommended this book, and I was so excited to finally read it because of the premise.

The writing style didn’t work for me. It was pages and pages of Lucy’s narration and not a lot of dialogue or even action. It’s paragraphs upon paragraphs of her stream of consciousness, observations, judgements, etc. and I was simply BORED.

This is a coming of age story, and I was ready for intense angst, all consuming sexual tensions, constant state of wonder, difficult conversations, deception, and I didn’t quite get these elements. Like when Lucy got outed, it was so banal that I went back and forth the pages looking for that very important conversation to happen or some sort of confrontation but I was left wanting. Everything was surface level, and although I love that Lucy’s narration allowed us readers to immerse ourselves in the story, it didn’t deliver the emotional impact I wanted from it.

Chloe Michelle Howarth is undoubtedly an excellent author. I was transported to the idyllic village of Crosswater in Ireland, brimming with the lush beauty of the countryside. Here, we meet Lucy and her posse of friends, who are on the verge of adulthood as they bid farewell to their final year in school.

Lucy is grappling with conflicting feelings for her best friend Susannah, with whom she has started to feel something more than friendship. At the same time, she has Martin, her childhood friend, who clearly harbors a crush on her and wants their relationship to evolve. The author skillfully guides us through Lucy’s inner turmoil as we delve into her deepest thoughts and feelings. She and Susannah do take a significant step, only to be discovered by a parent who disapproves of their relationship in a strictly religious household. We then see Lucy trying to maintain appearances by “going out with Martin” while keeping her relationship with Susannah a secret.

The book is beautifully written with intense and raw yearning and the conflict of coming to terms with one’s sexuality. However, I found that Lucy’s perspective sometimes became tedious. Her descriptions of every passing minute of her day felt overly detailed, making it seem like I was reading in slow motion. I would have appreciated it more if the author had included the perspectives of both Susannah and Martin.

Lucy’s “cheating” at such a young age was difficult to accept, especially since she acted without remorse or consideration of the consequences, and she continued this behavior into adulthood with Martin. What would she have done if she hadn’t been caught?

Despite these concerns, it is a beautiful book, truly a coming-of-age story filled with high emotions. However, I believe that having only Lucy’s point of view made it somewhat monotonous and dull. Nevertheless, I will continue to read anything that the author produces because she is truly magnificent!

3.75

Thank you #nethagalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book

This was beautifully written. The only notes I have are that the narrator's musings sometimes feel omnipotent, like her feelings and projections are said with such certainty that it took me out of the narrative at times. I also felt that there needed to be section markers within chapters, there were points were there were shifts in what was happening in a scene or situation, and then the next paragraph was a new day or topic.

Sunburn captures the hellish experience of being a teenage girl in the world, so selfish and so insecure, with feelings so large and overwhelming it's almost too much to bear. Now imagine that same teenage girl is also a deeply closeted lesbian, desperately in love with her best friend but too afraid of the consequences to love her out loud — that is Sunburn — it is sickening and overwhelming, spare and dramatic and raw.

"Sunburn" by Chloe Michelle Howarth tells the story of fifteen-year-old Lucy, who lives with her family in Crossmore, a rural village in the depths of Irland, set in the early 1990s. She feels different than everyone else there, can't seem to find words for it, longs for understanding, external and internal. She can't talk about it with any of her friends - all they every talk about are boy crushes, which boy they like better, fits better to the each of the girls and about the hottest village gossip. Only with Susannah she finds some sort of different connection, but she's still unsure about what it actually is - all she knows is that she can't stop thinking about her mouth, among many other things about her. It turns out Susannah feels the same way about Lucy, but can their love find a way in a deeply homophobic aka catholic and conservative place? "Sunburn" is the story of first love, about discovering the beauty of love, about growing into oneself. But is also is a story about how a deep conservativ, homophob, religious, and partiarchal mindset can crush a person; not just oneself but loved ones all around. It hurt quite a bit to read about Lucys self-doubt, how she thought of herself as unworthy, not enough; about her family and friends. It shows more than anything that we need queer and diverse representation always - now more than ever.

Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth
Publication Date: July 8, 2025


Set in a small Irish town in the early 1990’s, this is a tender and poignant coming of age story that follows Lucy, a teenager expected to follow the narrow preordained path laid out for girls in her community - marriage, children, and quiet conformity. Everyone assumes she will end up with Martin, her childhood best friend and neighbor. But Lucy is unexpectedly swept up in dizzying, intense and overwhelming feelings for Susannah.

When she discovers those feelings are mutual, she is thrown into emotional turmoil. She is terrified of losing her family and friends, but equally terrified of losing the only person who has ever made her feel truly seen and loved. And so starts a secret romance that awakens a sense of self in Lucy that she never knew existed. Although Susannah is willing to go along with keeping the relationship hidden, the secrecy begins to chafe her sense of self and makes her question Lucy’s commitment to her. She urges Lucy to make an impossible choice: embrace their love and leave everything behind or conform to societal expectations and lose Susannah.

This is a beautifully written novel filled with the joys, innocence and intensity of first love, and the painful reality of being in love in a place where that love is not accepted. Howarth transports you back into the all consuming experience of first love and captures the transformative power of being truly seen and accepted.

The novel powerfully depicts Lucy’s inner turmoil and struggle as she tries to reconcile her love with the rigid constraints of her environment. Much of Lucy and Susannah’s vulnerability is shared through heartfelt letters, expressing what they are too afraid to say aloud. The tension is heightened by the ever present scrutiny of a small town where nothing stays secret for long.

This novel captivated me from the very first page. I found myself completely absorbed, staying up late to finish it in one sitting. It’s a heartbreaking and beautiful story that is a must read.

So, like, it was good, but this was basically just the lesbian version of Normal People. Like straight down to the line about riding her in school

This was beautiful but so hard to read at times. Hard because it was so relatable as someone who grew up in a catholic family, and came out as a lesbian only after getting over those fears. I could feel the hurt, the indecisiveness, and the loss. But it could also feel the excitement of young love and what it does to all your senses. The author conveyed these aspects very well.

I clung to every word of this, it was written so well. There were times that the story dragged or became a little repetitive but it was worth it.

It was hard to read the last half of the book because of choices that were made, but they did come to a satisfying conclusion.

Excellent read!

it took a little bit for me to get into this, but im glad I stuck it out. i got so absorbed in the characters throughout the book and enjoy the open-ended (ish) ending, but i want to know where everyone lands

Really enjoyed this book, it was so beautiful! All the descriptions of her friend group reminded me so much of my own as a teenager. Summer and longing!! So beautiful and made me tear up. It felt long and slow at times but I still liked it.

Okay, rip my heart out and put it back in then I guess. As a lesbian woman this was heartbreaking and raw. I know times difficult now and I can only imagine how over 30 years difference could make. Lucy is struggling to find her way and come to terms with her sexuality in rural conservative Ireland and god did Chloe know how to tell that story. This is a prefect summer and Pride month read OR perfect during winter when you long for summer. Seriously so excellent!

I don’t think I could possibly love this book more if I tried. This is sapphic yearning to the max and I can see myself revisiting this book frequently. An easy 5 stars!

I received a copy for review. All opinions are my own. What a beautiful story so well written and filled with such perfectly described emotions I could actually feel them as if they were my own. I could feel the lust and love and sadness on every page. This was one of those books that when I finished it I had to take a little break just to stew in the emotions. A must read for every woman!

Sapphic, Irish, coming-of-age literary fiction might be my favorite niche, and Chloe Michelle Howarth has nailed it in this debut.

Lucy chooses to remain in the closet throughout high school in order to please her mother and the heteronormative society she is raised in, but feels tortured my her deep yearning for Susannah, who is much more confident in herself and that there is an accepting world out there.

This book is tender, heartbreaking, and infinitely quotable. There are letters exchanged between the two women that pulled at all my little heartstrings and I can tell this is a book I will return to and a new autobuy author for me.

Really liked this book. I loved the descriptions of living in a small, insular Irish town and the negotiations one must do to survive.

DNF - I wanted to like this so much and unfortunately at around 40% I had to give up. It’s beautifully written, but this DRAGGED ON. Not much happens and when it does, it’s not that impactful. Thai felt very YA and obviously it’s a coming of age story, but I just didn’t connect with Lucy or any of the other characters. I’m sure others will love this slow burn, but it just wasn’t for me.
Thank you for the opportunity to read this!

It took me a second to realize we were in Ireland, not the American South becuase it’s rural, traditional, and way more old school than you’d expect for the early ’90s, which gives the whole book this almost historical vibe. The later years feel a bit more rooted in time like i’m familiar with.

The writing is very stream-of-consciousness with less plot, more spiraling thoughts. Minimal dialogue, lots of internal monologue, and a narrative style that skips across long stretches of time without diving into scene-by-scene detail often. It feels like reading someone’s diary in real time.

For younger queer readers or anyone who’s ever felt stuck in a place that seems to already know your whole life, this book will get you.

I love the aspect of hearing about how you learn how Lucy learns and deals with her sexuality in the 90's.

Thank you Netgalley for the ebook!

This book is so poetic and so beautiful and real and raw. I am so emotional. It reads like a diary, the very depths into a young girl's heart. I feel like I've relived parts of my life through this book.

Sunburn is about Lucy, who is realizing she feels a bit more for her best friend Suzanna than she wants to admit. But this is the early 90s in a small town in Ireland where everyone attends mass and judges people that make different choices harshly. Her family and the town expects her to end up with her best friend Martin, but her entire being just wants Suzannah.


This is a fantastic read, it's so eloquently written and beautifully heartbreaking.

(I received this as arc)

“Now is the time between birth and slaughter”

From the opening knife-twist, Sunburn pulls at the tangle of your emotions until it unravels into the most basest form of sympathy and misery. In this debut novel, Chloe Michelle Howarth tells the story of Lucy, a fifteen-year-old girl living in a small Irish town during the early 1990s, a religious place just on the outskirts of Northern Ireland. Enter Susannah, a dear friend and object of all desires, a want that Lucy is not allowed to have. While trying to navigate her own personal turmoil, Lucy must face the facts of her conservative village, traditional mother, her unadulterated love for her best friend and the tragedy of being a teenage girl over the course of several years.

This book is many things: Ice in a tea towel, pressed against warm skin; A hand on a knee beneath the table, squeezing with comfort; Love letters and bathroom kissing and the deep-rooted terror of queerness, of being found out, of being too young to see the future stretch out in front of you. Howarth’s prose drags out memories of adolescent yearning, the recycled inner monologue of pulling petals off flowers, ‘does she love me, does she love me not’. She makes you remember what it was like to be afraid, to be ashamed, and allows you to watch from a great distance what could have happened to you had you not been so brave. She so eloquently captures the beauty of being young and in love with someone unacceptable, of being so fascinated by this revelation within yourself, that it is almost like reliving a personal past in vivid color. Howarth made me cry, made me laugh, made me clench the book in anger and run out of ink in my annotating pen. She made me look at how the sun shines upon the world, happily married and queer, and remember a time when I didn’t think it possible that the clouds would ever pass. My eyes are on her. Yours should be too.