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    Sunshine
    Sunshine
    Sunshine
    Audiobook15 hours

    Sunshine

    Written by Robin McKinley

    Narrated by Laural Merlington

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateDec 8, 2008
    ISBN9781400180080
    Author

    Robin McKinley

    Robin McKinley has won various awards and citations for her writing, including the Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown, a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature for Sunshine. Her other books include the New York Times bestseller Spindle’s End; two novel-length retellings of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Beauty and Rose Daughter; Deerskin, another novel-length fairy-tale retelling, of Charles Perrault’s Donkeyskin; and a retelling of the Robin Hood legend, The Outlaws of Sherwood. She lives with her husband, the English writer Peter Dickinson; three dogs (two hellhounds and one hell terror); an 1897 Steinway upright; and far too many rosebushes.

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    Reviews for Sunshine

    4/5

    2,117 ratings182 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be a mixed bag. Some reviewers enjoyed the story and world-building, but felt that there was too much internal dialogue and a rushed ending. Others found the book engaging and enjoyable, with a well-done combination of author and narrator. However, there were negative reviews that criticized the excessive descriptions, slow pacing, and unsatisfying plot. Overall, the book received a range of reactions, with some readers loving it and others feeling disappointed. Despite the mixed reviews, the book has its merits and is worth a read for those looking for an immersive and whimsical story.

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A vampire book, but more mature and thoughtful than Twilight.
    • 5/5
      I love this book, I read it every year and I highly recommend it. Told from Sunshine's honest point of view, her story is wordy and she goes off on tangents, but it's the process of thought and it allows for an instantly immersive world. I could praise this storytelling far more, but I'd rather not give any spoilers.

      Despite my love for this book, I am not thrilled with the narrator, but I would listen again anyways.
    • 1/5
      Far too boring! Been listening for hours at this point and it's 95% useless descriptions of things and 5% actual plot. Life's to short to read bad novels.
    • 5/5
      The combination of author and narrator is serendipitous. I enjoyed the story very much. The little Rae of sunshine was a tiny bit whiny at times but she's a good character. The end left me feeling a tiny bit bereft. Aside from that, good job, well done.
    • 5/5
      Sunshine is a young baker who makes incredible cinnamon rolls, dates bikers, and lives in constant danger in an alternate US. In her world, vampires, weres, witches and fey are all real...and humans are always at their mercy. Only by sticking together and plastering themselves, their dwellings, and even their motorbikes with protective charms can humans even survive a day. Given this, Sunshine is understandably upset when she's kidnapped as bait by a group of vampires.
    • 3/5
      Kinda drawn out… lots left unknown. Not sure I would read again. The beginning had a lot of potential then the middle was meh and the end just kinda left ya hanging.
    • 3/5
      McKinley doesn't do vampire novels quite as well as she does fairy tales, but I still liked this book.
    • 3/5
      This book is a book of possibilities. A baker befriends a vampire when they are both taken captive by an evil vampire master. Her magic affinity helps her vampire friend to withstand the sunlight, his vampire blood cures her poisoned blood. I was amused by her drive to feed people and her frustration that she cant use her baking skills to feed her vampire friend.
    • 5/5
      One of the best vampire books I have ever read. I tried to drag this out as long as I could, and yet it still ended! The characters were developed, the world was vivid and though different than ours, still believable, and the plot was clever and definitely didn't feel used or cliche. While packaged as a young adult book, I've also seen copies packaged for adults, and I would say this book leans toward the older end of young adult, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for the younger teens due to some violence and certain wording used on occasion. Those are minor issues, though. This book was wonderful and I would recommend it to anybody who likes vampire books but is tired with the crap being put out in pure Stephanie Meyer style.
    • 5/5
      This book was so good. I wish there was a series.
    • 4/5
      Dark fantasy--alternate reality where vamipres and the "things that go bump in the night" can (and do) get you. Great story and very detailed characters.
    • 4/5
      I grabbed this book because the cover had a blurb from Neil Gaiman saying "Pretty much perfect." The beginning was a little strange for me... I didn't quite get into it but I kept at it and found it to be a REALLY wonderful book. I'm not much into vampire fiction, but toward the end I thought, "This is what I wished Twilight would have been." It's almost like a Twilight for grown-ups. The prose is finely crafted but at times I was overwhelmed by its sheer volume. Overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Neil Gaiman or Jim Butcher, likes alternate worlds, or perhaps wants a Twilight-esque saga with a bit more maturity.

      I'll definitely be checking out more books by McKinley (and I almost wouldn't mind a sequel to this book, or at least another set in the same world.)
    • 4/5
      Really liked the over all story and world but there was so much internal dialog that took away from the actual story. Also would of liked a more indepth ending. It felt rushed.
    • 5/5
      First review:
      I wanted to like this book. And on a certain level I do. Rae is a very likable character and one who I feel a lot of sympathy for and identification with. I want to do what she does, except with books instead of Sunshine’s Eschatology and the giant cinnamon buns. And being me, I don’t mind a lot of the aspects that others might find highly dubious. By this I mean the vampires.

      On the other hand, a story that I would otherwise greatly enjoy was largely ruined for me by the smuttiness. Lots of smuttiness. I can deal with a little bit, but Sunshine contained quite a bit more than I could quite take.

      Which is really sad, because Robin McKinley’s writing is wonderful. I love almost all of her books and the fact that I can’t whole-heartedly love this one makes me unhappy. It is also sad because at its bottom Sunshine is a story of good and evil, of light and dark. But it is what it is and so I cannot recommend it. I wish that I could, but in all conscience, I can’t.

      Second review:

      Erm. I love Sunshine.

      I don't know what happened exactly in the time between that first read and now. Maybe my standards of smuttiness changed, maybe it's just that the story got under my skin and stayed there. I think it's that.

      It's a book I don't recommend for everyone. If content bothers you, don't read it. If content doesn't bother you, or if you want to try it anyway, you'll find great characters and worldbuilding, and a wonderful antidote to certain other vampire novels.

      -----

      A re-read of a lovely book. It’s definitely NOT for the little 13-year-olds who just read Beauty, but it’s a great antidote to other vampire books I could mention (by which I mean just about all of them). And Rae is possibly one of my favorite narrators ever. [July 2011]
    • 5/5
      The plot is good. The characters are wonderful. But the language is what really makes this book stand out. The characters speak a dialect that's entirely understandable and rings true, while also distinctively reflecting a postapocalyptic Earth with vampires and demons and magic and such. It's also a book in which it seems entirely natural for a dessert to be named "Sunshine's Eschatology."
    • 5/5
      This is not one of your typical vampire books. In fact, it is more about Rae "Sunshine" Seddons, a young baker, who happens to get thrown into a situation where she actually saves a vampire named Constantine by using an unlikely power of her own...sunlight. The pairing is surprising and their friendship and what the consequences mean are written in a way that is clear an interesting to the reader.I read a lot of books and many of them don't surprise me like this one did. That is what made this novel a joy to discover.I want to thank my friend Annie who let me borrow this book. She truly has good taste in authors.
    • 5/5
      This book makes me hungry. All the baking stuff! The book is completely rich with detail, the character and world-building is glorious.

      Edit now I've reread:

      Sunshine was a reread, but it's been a while and some things were a surprise to me all over again. I was worried it wouldn't stand up to a reread: I skimmed a couple of other reviews and saw that people had some pretty negative things to say about it. And I certainly saw the truth in the things that were said, but I also enjoyed reading the book again. It helps that it's an incredibly rich experience. The writing appeals a lot to my synaesthesia. It's pretty sensual writing as it is: there's a lot of detail, a lot of talk about cooking, and also a lot of feeling. Descriptions of sight and smell and hearing.

      The whole book is written in first person POV. The main character is Sunshine, and she's "not your average heroine", as they say. She has no ambition, she's not all that smart, she's not that brave, and she'd quite happily live in her bakery all her life. Some people find her hard to like, but I think she's quite human and although she does get a lot of power, eventually able to kill vampires with her bare hands, she doesn't want it and she's scared of it. I find the writing interesting and absorbing, but I'm sure for some people it's too rambling and/or dense. It does take her an awful long time to do something as simple as log onto the internet equivalent.

      The book is set in a post-apocalyptic world where magic, vampires, demons and succubi -- to name a few -- exist. All those kinds of things are for real. This could be 'our world in the future' given the references to Bram Stoker, or an alternate reality. It's never made exactly clear, but I suspect the latter because of the slang words the characters use -- "carthaginian hell", "spartan", "sheer". I like that there's no explanation of the slang, given that the book is narrated by someone who is a part of that world. You just don't really think about that kind of thing in normal life: why would you? Sometimes Sunshine explains things that shouldn't need explaining, like how to kill vampires, but you can't avoid doing exposition entirely!

      The thing that really impresses me about this is that the vampires aren't overly sexualised, and while Constantine is still an ally, he remains unsettling. Okay, there are a couple of scenes in which Sunshine has chemistry with him, but she's also more often than not aware that there's something vastly different about him. He moves differently, he looks different, there's no heartbeat... I like the way it ends on an awkward note, with them not quite sure what's going to happen now but not wanting to lose contact with each other.

      A lot of the more minor characters are completely fascinating and have big backstories that we clearly barely glimpse -- Mel, Yolande, Sunshine's grandmother, the goddess of pain, the SOFs in general... There's a lot to work with in this world, and I'd really love to see a sequel.

      My main problem with this book is how it made me crave cinnamon rolls. Argh!
    • 4/5
      Sunshine is one of the first vampire books that I have ever read in which such a situation occurs, this is one awesome book.
    • 3/5
      This book follows Sunshine, a rather ordinary baker with a fairly ordinary life. But when she goes to the lake for nothing more than nostalgic reasons, she unexpectedly (when is it ever truly expected tho) gets kidnapped by vampires and trapped with another. This one, Constantine, has not eaten for a long time, and Sunshine is the gotcha from the other vampires.

      What Sunshine doesn't realize is that even when she escapes this impossible situation, the vampire world is far from done with her, and the vampires vs everyone else dichotomy is not as black and white as she'd thought.

      This book was ok. Idk. Like it was good, albeit fairly plain, but I didn't particularly enjoy the story, and idk if I enjoyed the style. Nothing against the author or the story; I just don't think it really jived with me.
    • 5/5
      This book was definitely a journey. I was always engaged, while simultaneously asking myself "do I like this?" in terms of genre and medium (audio book). This book is like comfort food; enough edge for a full bodied story, but easy to digest with it's whimsy. Read it especially if you want something enjoyable to get lost in.
    • 2/5
      this book is a jumbled mess. there's a good story in there somewhere, but it's buried under a bunch of repetitive, yet unclear, overly descriptive word chunks. McKinley is a well-established author, so I don't know if this was just an early book or a rough draft, but there's a ton of "telling" instead of "showing". the urban fantasy/vampire that's not as bad as the rest of them/sorta romance/discovering one's hidden talents genre is full to the brim, so there's no need to waste time on an example this deeply flawed.
    • 4/5
      I’m only giving it 4 stars because the author didn’t make more books in this world. Otherwise - a great magic/vampire novel.
    • 3/5
      Sunshine (Rae) has spent her life trying to be normal - Well as normal as it can be in a world full of vampires, sorcerers, were?s and other creatures that go bump in the night. Despite coming from a strong powerful family of sorcerers Sunshine just wants a normal life baking cinnamon rolls in her family?s coffeehouse. Despite her attempts to live a normal life Sunshine is soon flung into the other world when she?s kidnapped by a gang of vampires and finds that she?s to be dinner for her fellow vampire prisoner Constantine. It soon becomes clear that if they both want to get out alive they?ll have to form an unlikely alliance to escape Constantine?s enemy Bo who keeps them imprisoned and Sunshine will have to use her supernatural sorcerer powers that she?s been trying to deny having all these years. The rest of the story follows Sunshine's development of her powers and her forbidden alliance with Con to defeat the master vampire Bo.First things first I?d like to say that I love a good vampire novel. Was this a vampire novel? Me thinks not. The vampires in question hardly feature, and when they do there is little action. I really enjoyed the start of this novel but the rest of the book I found really quiet boring which is probably the worst thing a book can be. There was little action and the middle of the book was filled up with Rae's constant unnecessary babbling. The ending was left really unfinished with a lot of questions still unanswered which would leave a great opening for a sequel but after looking on Robins website it says she has no plans and doesn?t intend to write a sequel which is really quiet bazaar with the way the books set up. However there were parts of the novel I enjoyed very much. I liked the idea of the voodoo wars and I enjoyed learning about Rae?s power.I really had high hopes for this novel as I?ve heard a lot of good things about Robin McKinley. I?ll probably try something else by her in the future but I definitely won?t be re-reading this and I won?t be recommending it!
    • 5/5
      So good I didn't want it to stop. Loved it!
    • 3/5
      It's been several years since the Voodoo Wars, so when Sunshine needs to get a few quiet hours away from her work and family, she feels perfectly safe driving out to the cabin by the lake for the evening, never suspecting that vampires are about to change her life for ever. This is not your typical vampire book. It's nothing like the wildly popular Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, and it's very different from other books I've read by Robin McKinley. Sunshine, the main character, reminds me just a little bit of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plummer, but, although there is a certain amount of sarcastic humor, this is not a funny book. It's well written, the characters are well developed, and I liked the story well enough, but I didn't love it. Maybe the vampire genre is getting a little tired out, at least for me.
    • 1/5
      Worst book I’ve ever read! I was brave and dragged through the entire book. Many times I was going to DNF it, but I thought and hoped it would get better. It never did. I would only recommend this book if you are having problems falling asleep at night.
    • 4/5
      The book was ok. An easy read, but kept my attention.
      Wasn't a fan of the narrator. She has this habit of whisper-talking most of the male voices. Even with my phone volume all the way up, I still had trouble hearing her.
    • 5/5
      An unexpected joy. A little slow for me at the start, but then I was hooked and needed to see it through.
    • 3/5
      This book didn't quite meet my expectations, the storyline had the potential to be really good but didn't quite get there for me. The main character 'sunshine' was likeable enough but everything with regards to her being kidnapped, working as a baker, developing a bond with a vampire and getting involved with the SOF just didn't work. I would have liked the author to provide more detail about her background and perhaps develop her special powers a bit more but she didn't do this. It had enough in it for me to want to continue reading it till the end but it wasn't really as good as I wanted it to be.
    • 4/5
      And speaking of non-trashy vampire books, I give you Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. The eponymous Sunshine, baker at a local coffeehouse, gets abducted by vampires for nefarious purposes I won’t go into here, and what with one thing and another, she gets sort of sucked in (ho, ho, ho) to some goings-on in the vampire world, and it’s tricky for her because in fact she would sort of prefer to be a coffeehouse baker. Rather than Defeating Evil. And there are some desserts and a vampire of much greater elegance and better mastery of language than Edward of Twilight.As I say, a non-trashy vampire book, though reading a trashy one and watching Dark Shadows (best show ever, by the way, with Lt. Nathan Forbes (Joe in the present day) as the absolute best character on there, though we like Carolyn quite a lot too) did have a lot to do with the timing of me rereading this one. I’ve not read it in ages, actually – the first time was on one of our “camping trips”, where we basically make a ton of food and eat it over the weekend while the more adventurous of us go hiking or boating and the lazier of us (this always includes me) sit home and read things. Sunshine was an excellent find, definitely better in quality than this past year’s major book undertaking, which was Forever Amber (and also Purple Hibiscus and Cordelia Underwood, but those took up much less of my time and emotional involvement).What I would say about this book is that it leaves you still wondering about a lot of things. A lot of things. And some of them are good things to wonder about, like, Why is Constantine such a cool name, and why is the world so constructed that it would be unacceptable for me to name my kid Constantine?, but some of them are things you don’t want to be wondering about at the end of a book, like, What’s the damn difference between Con and Bo anyway (apart from the obvious nice/mean distinction)?However, I find upon rereading that these are less frantically crucial issues than I thought they were last time I read the book. Last time I finished it and I was like, Well for Christ’s sake thanks for nothing! and I was particularly cross, may I just say, about not finding out anything interesting about the goddess of pain. Actually I’m still a little cross about that. But this latest rereading, which as I say is a good long while on from when I read it last, has made me feel better about the general construction of the book and advancement of the plot.There is definitely that thing that Robin McKinley is prone to, where she has to describe the way people are feeling and the entire background story to a remark someone’s about to make/just finished making, in unreal amounts of detail. She sometimes sacrifices the plot for this (see: Dragon Haven (but not really, I read it before I started this website)), but not in the case of Sunshine. It is occasionally too much but mostly quite interesting because hey! vampires!So I vote yes to this book. Indeed I would say her best since Beauty. Though Deerskin was also quite good.
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