Sunshine
Sunshine by Robin McKinley is $1.99! McKinley has been recommended several times at SBTB HQ. I always love featuring this one because we get some really lovely comments.
“Her feet are already bleeding – if you like feet…”
There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it’s unwise to walk. Sunshine knew that. But there hadn’t been any trouble out at the lake for years, and she needed a place to be alone for a while.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t alone. 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 a figure stirring in the moonlight.
She knows that 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, as dawn breaks, she finds that he has not attempted to harm her. And now it is he who needs her to help him survive the day…
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Assassinâs Gambit by Amy Raby is $2.99! This fantasy romance is the first in the Hearts and Thrones series. Readers seemed to be mixed on the assassin heroine. Some really liked her and felt for her inner turmoil and conflict. However, others felt they never got to see her âassassinâ skills in action.
Vitala Salonius, champion of the warlike game of Caturanga, is as deadly as she is beautiful. Sheâs a trained assassin for the resistance, and her true play is for ultimate power. Using her charm and wit, she plans to seduce her way into the emperorâs bed and deal him one final, fatal blow, sparking a battle of succession that could change the face of the empire.
As the ruler of a country on the brink of war and the son of a deposed emperor, Lucien must constantly be wary of an attempt on his life. But heâs drawn to the stunning Caturanga player visiting the palace. Vitala may be able to distract him from his woes for a whileâand fulfill other needs, as well.
Lucienâs quick mind and considerable skills awaken unexpected desires in Vitala, weakening her resolve to finish her mission. An assassin cannot fall for her prey, but Vitalaâs gut is telling her to protect this sexy, sensitive man. Now she must decide where her heart and loyalties lie and navigate the dangerous war of politics before her gambit causes her to lose both Lucien and her heart for good.
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Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa is $1.99! This is a YA fantasy novel inspired by Japanese mythology, and it was recommended by someone in my romance book club. This one has also been mentioned on the site in things like Book Beat and Hide Your Wallet.
Once Every Thousand Years…
Every millennium, one age ends and another age dawns…and whoever holds the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers holds the power to call the great Kami Dragon from the sea and ask for any one wish. The time is near…and the missing pieces of the scroll will be sought throughout the land of Iwagoto. The holder of the first piece is a humble, unknown peasant girl with a dangerous secret.
Demons have burned the temple Yumeko was raised in to the ground, killing everyone within, including the master who trained her to both use and hide her kitsune shapeshifting powers. Yumeko escapes with the templeâs greatest treasureâone part of the ancient scroll. Fate thrusts her into the path of a mysterious samurai, Kage Tatsumi of the Shadow Clan. Yumeko knows he seeks what she has…and is under orders to kill anything and anyone who stands between him and the scroll.
A wish will be granted and a new age will dawn.
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This book is on sale at:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!Once Upon a Wedding Boxed Set
Once Upon a Wedding Boxed Set by Kelly McClymer is 99c! This set collects books 1-4 in her Victorian historical romance Once Upon a Wedding series. These are full-length romances and four for less than a buck is a pretty stellar deal.
Once Upon A Wedding Boxed Set (Books 1-4)
Set against the glittering backdrop of Victorian high society, four romantic tales featuring the unconventional Fensters by acclaimed romance author Kelly McClymerâŠ
The Fairy Tale Bride
A disastrous London season convinces Miranda Fenster that happily ever after is for other people. But when an attempt to help her star-crossed brother goes awry, she finds herself married to the Duke of Kerstone. Can the hopeless romantic Miranda prove to her impeccably proper husband that fairy tales really do come true?The Star-Crossed Bride
Ever a gentleman, Viscount Valentine Fenster steps aside when the woman he loves, Lady Emily Wertherly chooses another man. When he discovers Emily’s fiance is a fortune-hunting murderer, Valentine tosses cautionâand decorumâto the wind to save her. But heâll have to move fast since the headstrong and highly-imaginative Emily is intent on saving herselfâŠThe Unintended Bride
Shy Hero Fenster loves two thingsâbooks and Arthur Watterly. But Arthur, the heir to a dukedom and pledged to another since birth, is the one thing she can never haveâthat is until the quest for a rare Arthurian manuscript and a night of passion in a bookshop change everything.The Infamous Bride
Notorious flirt Juliet Fenster enjoys the delights of the London season far too much to consider settling downâparticularly with a stuffy American like Romeo âRJâ Hopkins. But when the unlikely pair are cast in an amateur production of Romeo and Juliet, they find themselves doing far more than âplayingâ at loveâŠAdd to Goodreads To-Read List →
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I’ve said this before, but I lovelovelovelove SUNSHINE. I know it’s not for everyone. It’s first-person and the narrator, Sunshine, is chatty, discursive, assumes the reader knows about the Zombie Wars (which of course weren’t really about Zombies) and the threats of vampires and the humiliation involved in being a were-chicken. And there are two very different boyfriends (only one is a vampire). But it’s not really team this one or the other. She keeps having very enjoyable sex with one while falling in love (I believe) with the other very slowly. It takes a while to get used to the narrator and the world and there is LOTS at the beginning chat about her family, her work as a baker in her step-father’s coffee shop (very popular with those who police supernatural beings).
But I lovelovelovelove it. Constantine is my favorite book boyfriend of all time.
I reread this for comfort in hard times, which seem to be all times these days.
I enjoyed Sunshine as well. The only fault is that there isn’t a book of Sunshine’s recipes. They sound so good ….
Sunshine is a very lovely book which, while not ending in a true cliffhanger, opens enough questions which are not answered to be crying out for a sequel.
Then the author stopped writing,
I donât recommend it anymore Bc I feel like thereâs too much left unanswered.
@Cheryl: I totally understand your point. My understanding is that McKinley was devastated when her husband died and then struggled with serious illness herself. I would read a sequel in a heartbeat. I think I’ve just fleshed out the ending a bit in my own imagination, just as I want it to go. My imagined version of the scene after they go out of the door is quite swoony! đ
I love Sunshine. Re: lack of sequel: I’ll offer the alternate perspective that McKinley almost always leaves things up in the air. I read The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown back when they were originally published. I believe that at least one of them says there will be additional books about Damar– there still aren’t. (You can argue the Stone Fey, but, really, no.)
I went into Sunshine figuring there would never be a sequel, you’d be left with the sense that there was a whole lot more about this story you’d never know– and, yes, accurately predicted. It’s still a great book.
I am very sorry she’s lost her husband and has had her own health issues. If she writes anything, I’d love to read it. But it’s almost certainly never going to be a continuation to Sunshine, nor will it be about Damar– or probably connected to anything else she’s written. I think this is useful to understand if you’re thinking of reading McKinley at all.
Does anyone know if Robin McKinleyâs books are available in ebook format in the UK? I recently read and enjoyed The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown, but Iâve run out of room for paper books (husband complains that one day my book piles will fall and injure someone).
Putting my oar in, I quite like the way she leaves things slightly inconclusive- the endings are sufficiently tied-up to be satisfying but leave room for thought and imagination.
Outcrossing by Celia Lake is 99 cents on kindle. It’s billed as book 1 of a series.
Sunshine is one of my all-time favorites. And while I would LOVE LOVE LOVE a sequel, I feel like it works well on its own. I agree with @WS that this is fairly typical of McKinley’s writing. Her heroines gain the skills to defeat the immediate evil, and when the book ends the immediate evil is defeated and you feel like the heroine has the skills to face any further challenges. Thus, the books often leave characters after their happy for now endings, while leaving readers with the impression that they still have adventures waiting for them.
In other words, everything isn’t neatly wrapped up in a bow, but the endings are satisfying. Even the Hero and the Sword, which DOES wrap up pretty neatly, was written after the chronologically later book the Blue Sword, if I’m remembering correctly.
SUNSHINE is a masterpiece of YA supernatural fiction. The relationship between the heroine and the vampire is so subtle that it kind of catches you off guard. She regards him as this creature that’s so otherworldly and uncanny that physical attraction doesn’t even occur to her until she’s abruptly confronted with it in a scene that literally ruined my life. Ruined my life. I was an innocent teenage girl with a musty library book, and now I’m approaching 40 and I’m not over it.
I’m sorry. This was going to be a short and thoughtful review of one of my top ten favorite books but now I need a cinnamon roll.
@EJ I know exactly what scene you are talking about. I had a student who was really into vampires so she put together an independent study course last year. I sort of sighed inwardly because I am a one-vampire girl and that vampire in Constantine. I made her read all the major 19th C stuff, but we had SUNSHINE on the syllabus too. This student is probably 20? 21? She was SHOCKED, SHOCKED by the frank physical depiction of female arousal in that scene. I was surprised at first she was so shocked since most of my students these days grow up on a steady diet of porn, but after a moment realized it was obvious. Her level about being shocked did make me laugh though. Good for Robin McKinley, say I!
@Laura George
It is pretty surprising for a book written for teenagers in 2003.
Without getting too spoilery, it’s a good example of a story in which a young woman is depicted as having different important relationships (with her family, her community, her lover, etc) and she isn’t forced to choose any of them over the others. She doesn’t have to make a lifetime commitment to a man for them to feature in her life, if that makes sense.
I’ve read Sunshine and it is indeed a delight.
I’d classify Sunshine as New Adult (NA) rather than Young Adult (YA), although that distinction is amorphous and definitely didn’t exist in 2003. I think I found it in the adult fantasy section, and it was probably the first time I encountered a NA fantasy book (which are still quite rare!). Quibbles about what content/themes makes a book YA versus not YA aside, I believe the main character is in the New Adult age range of 19-21, versus what I consider to be YA age range 15-18. (I would also argue that it is also NA thematically, as it has that I Have Left My Parent’s House and Figured Out Some Adulting, but Now What do I Do With My Life? feel going on.)
Side note: why ARE New Adult fantasy novels so rare? Where are all my magical university books? Does magical education end with magical high school???
I canât think of any reason Sunshine would be a YA novel. The heroine isnât school age and works a full time job. It even won a Fantasy award for Adult Literature.
@sweetfa: Amazon UK doesn’t appear to have the Kindle edition of SUNSHINE, although they have her other books. Same with Audible UK: everything except SUNSHINE. Weird.
OT: This is one of my frequent rants about geographic restrictions in a digital world. Honestly, I would gladly participate in a list of addresses around the global Bitchery–not Buckingham Palace or the White House, but those apparently work–so we could all switch countries as needed to buy any book.
I have US and UK physical addresses and use a different email address for each. Some readers use a VPN. Buying books shouldn’t be this convoluted.
@Darlynne: âTwas ever thus. I have many English relatives and back in the day I had to ask my aunts or cousins to purchase books for me that were not available in the States. Availability issues have just grown exponentially with the advent of ebooks.
It’s possible that it wasn’t in the YA section, but for some reason I always thought it was?
Robin McKinley books were always on the YA shelves. That’s all I remember.
I loved it, but it never struck me as YA any more than Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin did.
Mind you, as a teen I found the first seven Laurell K. Hamilton Anita Blake books stashed on our YA shelves with Annette Curtis Klause’s Silver Kiss (which IS YA vampire romance) and the original Vampire Diaries books. I remember going to find the librarian to show her an orgy scene and apologetically explain that I didn’t think the Anita Blake books were in the right place at all. (Yes. I was THAT teenager.)
It strikes me that Tam Lin is another gorgeously languorous book which suddenly, violently hurries up at the ending.
Iâm 100% just commenting because of all the Robin McKinley love in these comments and then got an added shot of Tam Lin.
@Darlynne: thank you for checking for me, I wondered if I was just failing to find them. I might just have to sneak the paperback on to one of the wonky piles of books, then.
Sometimes I still think about Sunshine’s last convo with the vampire dude, when she feels his body waking up. That random detail has always stayed with me, it was so intimate and interesting – and it comes at the end when they’re already allies but McKinley drops that in there to remind you they’re still quite different, really good writing there. I had a 2 week long flail when I realized That Was It and it’s always been a headscratcher why there wasn’t more considering how longlived this book is, now I know why :\
@MaryK: I think sometimes people think of it as YA because it was originally published as adult, but YA imprint Speak put out a sparkly gold YA edition in 2010. That’s where some folks probably encountered it in the YA section of the bookstore/library.
Amazon even has this in the plot blurb on that edition of the book: “Originally published as an adult novel, but now in YA for the first time”.
My best friend has read tons of vampire/paranormal novels and when I gave her “Sunshine”, she read it and pronounced it the best vampire novel she’d ever read.
@HeatherS – Interesting!
Marketing is so weird.
I LOVE Sunshine. But I have to state that I go into it thinking it is a friendship story, not a romance. Sort of creepy if you think of the main relationship as romantic.
@Laura George, @Cheryl: Yes, McKinley lost her husband (the novelist Peter Dickinson) after a long illness. She herself has ME/CFS, and seems to have left writing behind for some years now. For a few years, even after Peter’s death, she maintained a blog, in which she wrote about her dogs (“hellhounds”), her interest in traditional English change-ringing, and her voice lessons, among other things, but she hasn’t added to the blog in years. It’s heartbreaking, because she is such a fine writer.
I’m (mostly) just commenting to give some cover love to ‘Assassinâs Gambit’.
This is the first time ever I’ve heard about ‘Sunshine’, might have to check that one out.