Sunshine by Robin McKinley

Rae Seddon, nicknamed Sunshine, lives a quiet life working at her stepfather’s bakery. One night, she goes out to the lake for some peace and quiet. Big mistake. She is set upon by vampires, who take her to an old mansion. They chain her to the wall and leave her with another vampire, who is also chained. But the vampire, Constantine, doesn’t try to eat her. Instead, he implores her to tell him stories to keep them both sane. Realizing she will have to save herself, Sunshine calls on the long-forgotten powers her grandmother began to cultivate in her when she was a child. She transforms her pocketknife into a key and unchains herself–and Constantine. Surprised, he agrees to flee with her when she offers to protect him from the sun with magic. They escape back to town, but Constantine knows his enemies won’t be far behind, which means that he and Sunshine will have to face them together.

I have been a fan of Robin McKinley’s for a long time. Beauty was the first book I ever checked out from my high school library and I absolutely loved it, I read Chalice just a few months ago and loved it, too. There have been a few exceptions — I still haven’t managed to finish Deerskin, for example — but for the most part I love them, and love them well enough that pretty much any McKinley book is an instant-purchase. So when I found out that she’d ventured out from YA and written an adult novel — and one about vampires, no less — Well. Be still my heart.

Sunshine lived up to most of my expectations. The first section of the book (it’s broken up into four “parts”, and I was sucked into this book so strongly that I was nearly three-quarters of the way through it before I realized that it didn’t have any chapters) is absolutely fabulous. I’ve neglected sleep, work, and even sustenance over my addiction to this book. Sunshine’s voice is very different from what I’m used to from McKinley, but absolutely delightful. I loved seeing baking through her eyes, and much like Chalice made me really wish that I liked honey more than I do, Sunshine made me really wish that I could manage to bake a loaf of bread that didn’t turn into a sour brick. And Constantine — I don’t have words for how much I loved Constantine. You could chain me up in a crumbling ballroom with him any day.

I did have a few nits — Sunshine has a tendency to tell us about the way her world works, and I felt this bogged the story down, especially the latter half. I would have much preferred to be shown these things, and spared the infodump. There are also some well-meaning types in the book who keep asking Sunshine to put put her life on hold, and herself in danger, in order to help them out with their fight against the Others that threaten humanity, and I kept wanting Sunshine to put her foot down and tell them to stop ordering her around and assuming that when they said “Jump,” she’d answer, “How high?” That said, though, while Sunshine’s reactions may not have always been what I wanted her to do, I did think that they were incredibly realistic for the situations she found herself in, much more so than many vampire books I’ve read. Goodness knows, I probably would have been just as scared out of my wits and overwhelmed as she was. Likely more so.

Also, from a purely selfish-reader perspective, I wanted much more of Con than I actually got. But in all fairness, McKinley could’ve had Con jumping in on every page and it probably still wouldn’t have been enough for me.

Despite my few minor complaints, I did really enjoy this book. It’s definitely a keeper, and I’m sure it will be one of the books that I routinely pull off my shelves to reread favorite passages.