The Sun In Her Eyes by Paige Toon
Published: May 21st 2015 by Simon & Schuster UK
Genres: ChickLit, Women’s Fiction, Romance
Pages: 385
Source: Goodreads

Blinding sunshine; A bend in the road; What became of the little girl with the sun in her eyes?

Amber was three when a car crash stole her mother’s life. She doesn’t remember the accident, but a stranger at the scene has been unable to forget. Now, almost thirty years later, she’s trying to track Amber down. Amber, meanwhile, is married to Ned and living on the other side of the world in London. When her father has a stroke, she flies straight home to Australia to be with him. Away from her husband, Amber finds comfort in her oldest friends, but her feelings for Ethan, the gorgeous, green-eyed man she once fell for, have never been platonic. As Ethan and Amber grow closer, married life in London feels far away. Then Amber receives a letter that changes everything. ‘Before your mother died, she asked me to tell you something…’

I have been a huge Paige Toon fan since her debut novel, Lucy In The Sky, was released. I have to admit, I very rarely read ChickLit at all, but Paige’s novels have always hit the spot for me. They are summery, perfectly written, with extremely likeable protagonists – the perfect beach read. The Johnny Jefferson stories (Johnny Be Good, Baby Be Mine, and Johnny’s Girl) have always been my ultimate favourites and are well worth a read.

So, like many other Paige Toon fans, I was ridiculously excited for The Sun In Her Eyes, and suffered the excruciating one year wait for this new release. I finished it within a matter of hours, but unfortunately, unlike her other books, this one just did not do it for me.

This novel seems completely different to Paige’s previous works. Firstly, the heroine, Amber, is extremely dislikeable from the offset – her behaviour is selfish and she never sees fault in her own actions, even though they are questionable. Her childhood crush, Ethan, who she reignites her love for and ends up having an affair with, was originally extremely likeable, even if Amber wasn’t. We then see him for who he truly is – a cheating, weak, for lack of another word, idiot – and I nearly threw the book at the wall!

It wasn’t even that I was infuriated – it was just that I was sick to death of how dull the book was. I was bored! The only reason I read till the end was that I was hoping that something more interesting was going to happen. I liked Amber’s husband, Ned. He was portrayed as genuine and sweet. All I kept thinking throughout was how bad Amber’s judgement was to betray her devoted, kind husband for a smarmy childhood friend who she hadn’t seen in years.

Amongst all of this, Amber receives a letter from the lady who pulled her out of the car crash that killed her mother when she was a child. Throughout the novel, expectation is deliberately built up as Doris writes that there is a secret that Amber’s mother told her in her dying moments. Her message ends up being something entirely understated and not at all dramatic, as the build-up had suggested. This is fair enough, and the memories that Amber remembers during their heart to heart are sweet, but they are nowhere near as heart-grabbing as I imagine Paige had intended them to be.

The ending of the book was not any better. The protagonist, Amber, seemed almost proud of her affair. She finds out that she is pregnant, and after an initial panic that the baby might be Ethan’s, it turns out it is Ned’s. According to Amber, this means she can now happily get back together with Ned, and live happily ever after, without even telling him about the affair.

It would have been a much more genuine ending if Amber had confessed to Ned and perhaps, within time, he slowly forgave her, or she got the result that she deserved. The whole situation seemed wrong to me, and due to how unlikeable Amber’s character was, I wasn’t exactly rooting for everything to work out for her.

It was great to hear from characters from previous novels, in true Paige Toon fashion. Josh, the son of Michael from Pictures of Lily, and also Zara, from Thirteen Weddings, were both mentioned. Oh, and Jorge and Leo from The Longest Holiday, too, which definitely made me smile.

As much as I love Paige’s previous novels, this one was just boring, unoriginal, and utterly unstimulating. I wouldn’t even give it another thought. The contrast between her debut novel, Lucy in the Sky, which I enjoyed so much that I have read perhaps five times, is shocking. I really hope this is just a lull in creativity for Paige, and that her next read will go more in the direction of her first few books.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin