Sunshine

Author: Robin McKinley

Publishing Company: Bantam Books

Blurb:

There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it’s unwise to walk. But the lake has been quiet for years...She never heard them coming. Of course you don’t, when they’re vampires.

They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to the wall of an abandoned mansion- within easy reach of her fellow prisoner.

She knows he is a vampire. She knows that she’s to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet when dawn breaks, she is still alive. And now he needs her to help him survive the day…

The review:

I’ve had this book for a while and have never picked it up for one reason or another. And when picking this up, I was amazed at how it held my attention. The first pages (about twenty or so) are just the main character talking about her life, talking about her job and stuff. It should have been boring, I shouldn’t have wanted to read it because it was just what it was, her listing off her everyday life. I don’t know why it’s interesting, but it definitely was.

The way the book was wrote, it was slightly off putting. It was made up of four parts, but had no chapters. It was a little off putting because there are no chapters, so you aren’t sure when or where to stop. I don’t know if that helps with wanting to read more, but it was definitely different. There’s also the fact that for part one, we don’t find out the names of the two main characters. That was kinda strange.

Ok, speaking of characters, let’s talk about them! The main character was cool, though she did talk about food a lot, which made me rather hungry. She was a different character to what you expect. You can tell she’s content with her life, making cinnamon rolls, working in a café, just going with what she usually does. But as she continues to talk, you can also see how she does seem to want to break away from her normal life. She’s definitely different somehow.

Her character development throughout the book was consistent, you could see her growing but you could see how it was still sticking to her character, which was good to see. As she developed through the book, you could see her growing and beginning to show herself more. She was the same person but you could see her in a different way because she’s been thrown into a completely different situation from what she used to.

The vampire character was interesting. Very quiet but you knew he knew a lot, even if he didn’t let on what he knew. I would have liked to know more about his past, find out something interesting bits about his life, but we didn’t get much information at all really. We get told the bare minimum information, as he only gives us the stuff we need to know because the main character needs to know it. Obviously they can only tell us so much when it comes to the pace of the book, but still I felt as if she could have introduced more of the world to us.

I must warn you, it’s been a while since I read the book now and because of essays and other things, the book isn’t so clear in my head, so I apologise if this review isn’t as good as it should be.

The plot of the book was extremely different to other vampire novels that are around. Vampires are known to the world, but there isn’t this good thing that surrounds any of them. Everyone hates them, and not only that, you know that there isn’t a single vampire who’s ever been good, so there’s this mass fear of them. They aren’t made out to be these beautiful, strange and alluring creatures, they’re made out to be monsters.

There was something I didn’t like about the book though, well two things really. Half way through we start to find out that a lot of people are ‘half bloods’ which basically means they have demon blood in them. It seemed that they just continued to reveal themselves to hear which kinda annoyed me.

There was also the ending, I know Robin Mckinley has said she won’t do a sequel, and I can respect that, but it seemed as if the story should continue after.

My rating:

Setting: 3 out of 5

Characters: 5 out of 5

Plot: 4 out of 5

Writing: 4 out of 5

Thanks for reading x