And how horrible your experience with Robin McKinley sounds. Ugh. I probably would have felt just as you did with that strange response. That’s kind of depressing actually, considering how much I enjoy her YA fiction Isn’t the point of literature that much of it is completely subjective, based on the reader?

I saw on her site that she has no intention of writing a sequel to Sunshine at the moment. I hope she changes her mind.

About two summers ago I ran a YA fantasy book club for my students (we did the whole thing on a blog). Beauty was one of our titles. I contacted Ms. McKinley, asking if she would be willing to field a few questions from my students after they were done reading. She was gracious in emailing me back, but refused to do the Q&A. She gave me a long winding explaination (some reasons valid, other not so much.) She said there are some questions that she WON’T answer because “I feel they’re asked from not having read the story properly”. Maybe I’m weird, but that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. There is a proper way to read her stories? I’ll have to let my 12 and 13 year old students that they are reading wrong. um…no.

And, on principle, we try to avoid any spoilers in our reviews

Christine–I’m relieved to hear that you felt similarly halfway through the book! Just too much ‘style’ for me. But I agree that the story itself is mesmerizing, and very aptly put as a dark vampire fairy tale.

I wonder if she will be writing a sequel to this one? It seems rather open-ended, and I would like to see where how Sunshine and Con continue with their lives…er…well, you know what I mean

I read Sunshine in the Fall of 2006 when I first started reading romance and I was singularly interested in vampire romances. Needless to say, I became mesmerized by this novel despite the fact that it didn’t have the kind of romance I was looking for at the time. It is more of a dark vampire ‘fairy tale’ of sorts, I guess.

I agree with Thea that I often found myself losing interest in the middle of the story as the narrative became too meandering, but it did pick up for me again toward the end.

My favorite part was definitely the beginning… when Sunshine gets abducted and she meets Con, she discovers her self, and they escape together. That was such a compelling sequence of events and I think I kept reading through all the less compelling parts wanting more. And there were some more dramatic scenes… including the cool showdown in the end.

I agree with Shannon about how fascinating the relationship between Sunshine and Con was. I felt like a wanted to rush through everything else to get to the scenes with both of them in it so that I could witness more of their interesting dynamic.

As mentioned in your review, I liked how she dropped you into the middle of her world without a huge “explaining the history” moment. It developed along the way. I found the relationship between the two main charcters to be facinating. It does not follow the typical romantic path. Of course, this is probably because it is not a romance, but I loved them nonetheless.

I read the book just after it was released. I need to move it back into my TBR pile.