Absolutely heartbreaking, but still so full of life. The poetic nature of the writing adds such a personal touch to the story, and makes it feel so real. The feelings and emotions dealt with are so dimensional and moving, i will recommend this book to anyone that will listen

so incredibly written and achingly beautiful. we are really planted in the mind of our main character and her thoughts and pains and hopes became my own. i loved this book. 5 stars.

thank you so much to netgalley and the publisher for the arc <3

What an impressive debut. It’s hard to express how beautiful and thoughtful this book is. Sunburn follows Lucy, a teenager living in a small Irish town, as she comes of age. It’s a discussion of self-discovery and the repression inherent in growing up in an insular, religious community, as Lucy is torn between allowing herself to live authentically and honestly or to live the life that she has been raised for, that is expected of her by her friends and family. Most of the story takes place within the summer months, when Lucy is on break from school, and Chloe Michelle Howarth is adept at weaving the environment into the story. At times, the descriptions make this summer feel liberating in a way that is reminiscent of a childhood summer free from worries and responsibilities and at other times suffocating as they careen towards adulthood and must deal with the weight of societal expectations. The longer I’ve sat with this book, the more I’ve loved it and I can’t wait to see what Howarth writes next.

sunburn is a truly impeccable novel filled with sapphic longing, and the inevitability of growing up. i feel in love with the writing within this beautiful book. it became my entire heart.

lucy is a young girl in a small religious town, and she grows up with this group of girls that she feels very close to, along with her best friend martin. we follow her as she goes from middle to highschool, and then to young adult life. lucy finds herself falling in love with one of the girls in her friend group, and that is the main topic followed throughout the story.

i have never read yearning written like this. it was so emotionally raw, so pungent, so gutting, and so endearing. this is easily one of the best books i’ve read in 2025, and maybe ever. i am left speechless and sobbing. i cannot give it enough praise.

not only does this novel dive into sapphic love, but it also has a lot to say about family, identity, and independence. i know that i will never forget the experience i had reading it, and already can’t wait for the day that i pick it back up again.

sunburn is out in both the u.k. and u.s. as of the 8th of july. go and get yourself a copy if you’re looking to be emotionally destroyed and completed at the same time.

*Thank you to Melville House Publishing and NetGalley for the copy of this book! All opinions are my own.*

This book is all sorts of beautiful, devastating, wonderful, every which way you can feel. I pre-ordered my US copy (preferred the cover to the international edition ultimately) of this before I was even halfway done with it digitally because I knew I’d have to have it in my collection. There’s so many gorgeous bits of writing in these pages, it’s an annotating DREAM!

Not to mention the absolute YEARNING that goes on in this book. The young queer love that takes place in these pages is so layered and complex in a way that feels so realistic. It’s messy, it’s fearful, it’s all-or-nothing. It’s just… I adored it so fully.

The complicated familial dynamics - of all shapes and sizes - paired with the complicated way teenage friendships are so aptly depicted made this book feel so tangible to me. Everyone is so beautifully complex, not a single character feels like a forgotten piece.

The only thing that’s kept me from making this a full 5-star read is that I felt the pacing dragging a big in the middle. It loses its momentum for a moment, but it absolutely found its way again. I’ll be thinking about this book for a long, long time. And will absolutely be reading more of Chloe’s work. Incredible.

Grabbed this one after seeing it recommended so widely. Read it in a single day and there were some lovely moments. But, I am not generally a fan of a plotless hook and this one was no exception. Teenage angst portrayed well.

First, thank you so much for the opportunity to read this through Netgalley!! This book has been on my list for a while and I was so happy to have been given the chance to read it here!

This book launches the reader head first into the ever complicated twists and turns of teenaged Lucy's life growing up in a small town in Ireland. With her tight knit group of friends around her, readers walk with Lucy as she navigates her last few years of school, her family, complicated friendships, and societal dating expectations. To say this book is stunningly written is a huge understatement. I felt like I highlighted 2/3rds of it (at least!) The imagery, the push and pull of teenaged petulance, portrayal of queer love, haunting metaphors... it truly blew me away. I audibly gasped at the last sentence, what do you MEAN?! Huge, huge props to Chloe Michelle Howarth, thank you for giving us a glimpse inside your beautiful mind.

I can't believe I waited so long to read this beautiful queer love story. Having to choose to sacrifice being who you are for the approval of your mother or friends is a stark yet very real choice that many have to face, still today. Chloe dealt with the complexities of this in such a nuinaced manner, she didn't shy away from the perceived 'comfort' of giving up on yourself and following your hometowns trajectory - marrying the neighbour who your mammy chose for you and never venturing farther than the Croosmore town centre. She also didn't ignore the deep resentment that grows inside of you like a parasite should you choose that path. This book took me back to that place of adolescent anxiety, where in such a small span of time you go from choosing which cute top to wear to the disco to BIG choices you have to make about the direction of your life. Nobody should face the choice of to love or be loved, especially by your mother.

<u><b>Sunburn</b></u>
Chloe Michelle Howarth
Publication Date: July 8, 2025

ARC courtesy of Melville House and NetGalley.

I was grateful to receive an ARC of this book, first published in 2023, and honestly, has not been easy to find. This reissue from Melville House will be coming out on July 8, 2025.

Adolescence is difficult enough to navigate, what with changes in body morphology, hormones, and parents. Not to mention first love. In this endearing, heartfelt Sapphic romance, Lucy and Susannah deal with the exponential difficulties of self discovery and romantic love in a time and place where tradition holds sway. Sometimes we forget that this is still the case in a large part of the globe. Theirs is a touching and heartwarming story, beautifully written.

I would strongly recommend grabbing a copy while you can.

4.5 stars rounded up

Absolutely unbelievable. Could barely put it down and even then I did nothing but think about this book in-between sessions. Loved every single page. Spent a third of this sobbing and the other two thirds having the wind knocked out of me by every other line. Captures obsession as it ties to queer love vividly and gorgeously, unlike anything I've ever read.

The book begins in 1989 in a small, rural community in Ireland. Lucy, the sole narrator of the book, is 17 and is part of a group of girlfriends, but her best friend is Martin, the boy next door, who everyone thinks should be her boyfriend. Except slowly, Lucy realizes she is attracted to her close friend, Susannah, and spends a long time coming to terms with that before she and Susannah begin a relationship in secret. As they near the end of high school, Susannah wants to come out and publicly acknowledge their relationship, but Lucy is too tied to her family, especially her mother, and her friends to risk anything.

This is a beautifully written and heartbreaking coming of age novel. The author presents Lucy's inner dilemmas and decisions realistically, even when we are frustrated with her. The author's portrayal of the town, the teens, and mother-daughter relationships is complex and detailed.

All in all, a triumph of a novel.

I was provided an ARC by the publisher via NetGalley.

Sunburn is an excellent coming of age queer novel. Really well written. Captures the innocence and intrigue of discovering one’s sexuality.

This is a remarkable debut! Set in a very conservative Irish village in the ’90s, the story follows Lucy as she wrestles with identity, friendship, and a desire so totally consuming that it nearly breaks her! The vibe is introspective, restless and so very honest.

The characters are all seriously flawed and painfully selfish, but strangely lovable. Lucy and Susannah’s relationship is tender, intense, and sometimes morbid.
This is a beautiful love story that doesn’t shy away from the darker edges of longing and fear.

It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend. Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.

Such a quiet, tender, yet very powerful tale of love. There are so many beautifully complex dynamics, and they all felt so real. The writing is incredible, and so vivid it makes it so easy to visualize everything that's going on, and get lost in the story. The characters are so flawed in the most human way, and they all feel very fleshed out and have such tridimensionality, they all feel real. It's so honest and raw, it is heartachingly emotional, and it actually had me tearing up so often. It's engaging, but still slow, it's so mundane and it perfectly incapsulates youth. I absolutely loved it, and I think it is one of those stories that's going to stick with me for a while.

A lovely sapphic coming of age story set in 1990s Ireland. It leans in hard on first love, on Lucy's virtual obsession with Susannah. That love is forbidden in their community but she can't not. This is very much in Lucy's head and Howarth has captured the swirling that happens with first love. Thanks to Netgalley for the arc. A good read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read this book. Unfortunately this one fell flat for me. I was so excited for this story and I just really struggled to get into it. I love coming of age stories so I was bummed this one didn’t hit the mark for me.

What a gloriously messy look at queer love and reconing. Portraying an experience that is at once deeply painful and miraculous to witness, Sunburn is an instant favorite. Before I made it to the halfway point, I knew this would be a 5 star, best of the year, sort of read for me. Howarth has crafted a piece of literature so astoundingly true to the queer experience that it leaves you feeling stunned and breathless.

The characters are unlikeable in the way that we are all unlikeable. We see them in all their faults and errors, because they have been made real by the author. I see myself in Lucy. I hate her and I was her and I am her. I’ve made my way into my 20’s and I gasped as she made hers. I know Martin. I know being trapped in the friend group where you don’t quite fit but cannot stand to be on the outside of. I know finding religion in cathedrals of sin. There is something so beautiful about looking back on your life with the added influence of a new piece of art, and coming to an understanding why you made the choices you did. And something a little silly in being shocked and appalled at her path as if I didn’t use the same logic.

I take rather furious notes when reading, and I’ve never taken so many as when reading this. Apologies to the many friends I frantically texted and sent videos of me freaking out to. Understanding that I very likely have a unique and specific perspective on this one, I’m telling you to read it anyway. And if this novel is any representation of its type, we should all be reading more Irish lit.

Five stars and a piece of my heart for Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth. Thank you for the ARC.

sunburn is beautifully written, every sentence feels like poetry. Chloe’s descriptions are so vivid and emotional, i could feel every word. It’s one of those books where you want to underline everything (and i did). the only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars is because the pacing felt slow at times, and it took me longer to get through. but even then, i loved every second of it. such a stunning, immersive read.

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