Sunday, November 9, 2014

Sunshine by Nikki Rae


Genre:  YA Paranormal Romance
Sunshine Series, Book 1

Description (taken from Goodreads):
Sophie Jean is pretty good at acting normal. She can pretend she’s not allergic to the sun. She can hide what her ex-boyfriend did to her. She can cover up the scars she’s made for herself. Ignore anything. Forget anything.

Then Myles enters her life, and he has more than a few secrets of his own. Sophie discovers that when she's with him she is feeling too much. Remembering too much.

It’s one thing covering up her own dark past, but does she really need to worry about people finding out just how much Myles likes her? Or that despite how much she doesn’t want to repeat past mistakes, she kind of likes him back? Not to mention the fact that she now has to conceal that Myles drinks blood-that he says he’s about four hundred years old.

But Sophie can deal with this little glitch, no problem. Even if she’s putting the few people she loves at risk. Suddenly, those who were monsters before are just people, and the monsters? They’re real. Now being a normal human being is the least of her problems. Now she has to stay alive.

Sophie is just your average musically-inclined teenager who's allergic to the sun and hiding something from her past.  Wait a second?  Allergic to the sun?  Kind of makes me think of vampires, right?  Well, there are some vampires in this novel, and they're not as allergic as she is.  But anywho, you've got Sophie trying to survive high school, her mom's crazy ideas for normalcy, and this weird attraction to the new guy.  But the new guy's definitely got her attention.

This story begins with Sophie trying a new 'cure-all' drug that will help keep her sun allergy at bay.  With her mom trying to keep everyone on the normal page, Sophie (aka Sunshine) has to work twice as hard to hide the weirdness.  But then Myles shows up at school as the new guy.  And Sophie's friends are dying to meet him and set him up with Sophie.  Maybe making a new friend wouldn't be so bad.  But Myles has a secret.  And Sophie's got a past that's she's trying to protect.  But when the monsters appear, all hell seems to break loose.

This is a classic young adult vampire romance that introduces mystery in the interactions.  And I feel like there's a subtle mystery hidden between the lines that might be explained in the later books; so yes, expect that mystery all the way through to the end.  But we get to deal with a character that's trying to survive life, and she's growing through various interactions.  Really I had only two problems with this novel.  One - I couldn't connect with the main character and wasn't a fan.  Dissing your parents is a major turn off for me (although I'm pretty sure my teenager self wouldn't have this issue).  Two - this book follows a typical theme that we've seen before (except these vampires don't sparkle).  However, this story becomes different when we explore the depths of the characters.

This is a book for the vampire-romance lovers.  I might even say it'd go well for YA romance lovers as well.  Check it out.


Thanks goes to Nikki Rae for providing me a review copy.

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