Books like Sunshine

Okay, so I seriously pondered over whether to give this book three stars or four. In the end, I DID enjoy it so I felt generous and gave it four, but it's not without its faults.Once, when I was a little kid, my parents bought me my favourite ice cream. There's actually only one kind of ice cream that I actually like and that's mint choc chip. Only they bought this MASSIVE bowl of it with a banana in it and extra chocolate sauce. I can only guess that they'd finally decided to slowly kill me via diabetes, cholesterol and blood-pressure, and be rid of my annoying, argumentative, five-year-old ways. I can promise that it almost worked and they were almost home free except they'd miscalculated one thing - my short attention span. Sure the ice cream was delicious and kept me entertained but there was just so much of it and the mint ice cream was just a little too much in ratio to the choc chip that I like and even the chocolate sauce couldn't entirely keep my concentration.Well, Sunshine is a bit like that. It's good. It's really good. It's a vampire novel so it's pretty much RIGHT up my alley too and so by definition I should have really enjoyed this book.There was really just the problem that there was too much useless narrative in ratio to the action and suspense. Sunshine would start babbling about some inane facet of life that had NOTHING to do with the story and doesn't really add anything to it. Now, if this was world building for a future novel I could have forgiven it, but I have heard, rather mournfully, that there will be no more to this series and that makes me very annoyed. Like when I lost interest in my mint choc chip ice cream at one interval and my evil parents had it whisked away by an annoyed waitress (I'll have my revenge one day!)So whilst I enjoyed much of the book, I found myself falling asleep a lot because it would launch into these long stories like my 80 year old grandma does when you ask her how her day was. Don't even get me started on how UNRESOLVED the end was. There were things I REALLY wanted to know. There were certain sexy scenes I REALLY wanted to read and there was information and intrigue that was left dangling! It's infuriating!One good praise I would like to make for Sunshine is the reversal in a genre of a practice that baffles me. I've complained before that often in YA books, swearing and sex between the main characters doesn't really happen.Yet rape and violence is often described and occurs, sometimes rather graphically.Well, in this book the main character has sex with her long time boyfriend and it's a sweet nonevent - these positive and healthy examples of sex are good! Can we have more caring and loving and healthy relationships displayed for our youth like this, please? There is one particular swearword I wished the book hadn't used (it starts with C and rhymes with bunt... figure it out.)I really hate that word. But the two mentions of dick are cool with me - except Robin Cockblocking McKinley is a cockblocking temptress of doom and if you have read this book then you'll know why I say this! Can someone explain to me why she is not continuing with Sunshine and Con? Please? Why? Why build all this world and have all this and cockblock us (Yes! That's exactly what you did!) only to leave us hanging? It's just rude. At this point I really wouldn't mind what would end out to be the literary equivalent of a pityfuck just to satisfy me and tie up all the freakin' loose ends!Finally, I say I enjoyed this book. I did. Like my ice cream, it was just the kind of thing I liked. Too bad there was so much of it and at times it became work just to get through it and finally finish it. Over all, it was a really good serving of mint choc chip ice cream with a huge serving of cockblock. I liked it, but I refuse to go on a date with Robin McKinley again unless she promises to put out.