Sunshine y Robin McKinley

I'm sure we're all familiar with Sunshine. I had heard about this book for years and finally picked it up on the recommendation of a friend. And I'm glad I did - it is definitely a good cure-all for all that paranormal romancy-vampires-are-so-awesome-even-when-they- are-100-year-old-virgins stuff that dominates teen fiction these days (despite this not being a YA novel as such).

And yet...and yet I had no idea what the hell was going on half the time. I'm more than willing to blame it on my 7 month pregnant brain, but I don't think it was all me.

What did I have trouble with? Well, it started with me not realizing this was set in an alternate reality (for lack of a better term). This was not our world. This story was set in a world similar to ours, but a world that had always had magic, vampires, and all manor of demon activity from the get-go. Actually, this didn't bother me. I liked it, but it may have set the stage, so to speak, for my confusion.

I never could understand the slang. None of it. I never even picked up on contextual clues as to what the heck it meant. But the thing that bummed me out the most was that Sunshine, our heroine, didn't know jack shit either. Yes, she's learning, but I've rarely met a main character that learned so gosh darn slow. Don't get me wrong - I liked her a lot. I liked her story a lot. I did not like that I finished the book and hadn't learned more about how her magic and the greater world functioned. I felt like there were missed opportunities. I missed me getting sucked into the story and yelling out, "no freakin' way" when something was revealed. Because there weren't any "no freakin' way" moments. That, my friends, made me sad.

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Book Source = Library Copy