SUNBURN
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
Rachel is a teenager who lives a gray suburban life in gray suburban England. It’s a world of brown sauce, warm beer, and scrambled eggs every Tuesday. With her summer already mapped out for her—a job working at the butcher and a caravan holiday in Clacton—it seems like this year will only bring more of the same. So when family friends invite her to spend the summer with them in Greece, she jumps at the chance to escape her life and finally be treated like an adult.
The Warners are everything her parents are not—glamorous, sophisticated, and carefree—and when Rachel meets Benjamin, a handsome young friend of the Warners, her summer seems to be taking a turn for the better. But there’s no escaping the pains of growing up, and she’ll soon learn that life on a small island where everyone knows each other’s business may not be all it’s cracked up to be.
Drawn by SIMON GANE, the artist behind Eisner-nominated Ghost Tree and THEY’RE NOT LIKE US, and written by ANDI WATSON, author of The Book Tour, Kerry and the Knight of the Forest, and the forthcoming Punycorn.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Watson (Breakfast After Noon) and Gane (Ghost Tree) whisk readers away to a sunny Greek fantasy island in this romantic character-focused graphic novel. Teenage Rachel is invited to spend the summer with wealthy family friends, married couple Diane and Peter Warner, in their villa on a small Greek island, a considerable upgrade from her part-time job at the butcher shop in her drab English suburb. While in Greece, Rachel indulges in food and wine at sophisticated nightly parties, and Diane encourages a romance with summer visitor Benjamin. As her vacation stretches on, Rachel experiences increasing social exhaustion and struggles to contextualize Benjamin's suddenly cagey behavior and Diane's mysterious comings and goings. Everything comes to a head after Rachel uncovers a heartbreaking secret that threatens to upend her Mediterranean getaway. Gane's lush illustrations, portrayed in bright oceanic hues, earthy browns, and red accents, artfully render intricately detailed Grecian backdrops and conventionally attractive characters frolicking in the ocean. Watson conveys understated emotion via layered dialogue and measured pacing paired with deliberate plotting in this quiet, sun-drenched drama. Ages 13–up.