Chloe Michelle Howarth

Chloe Michelle Howarth was born in July 1996. She grew up in the West Cork countryside, which has served as an inspiration for her writing. She attended university at IADT in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, where she studied English, Media and Cultural Studies. Chloe currently lives in Brighton. Sunburn is her debut novel.

Author's books

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Heap Earth Upon It

A creeping story of sapphic obsession with Gothic undertones and a delicious mid-century feel, from the author of the Polari Prize-shortlisted Sunburn.

 

January 1965. The orphaned O’Leary siblings—Tom, Jack, Anna and Peggy—arrive in the village of Ballycrea, tight-lipped about their troubled past and desperate for a fresh start.

 

After being met with suspicion from most of the locals, the family are thrilled when they’re taken under the wing of their well-respected neighbours, Bill and Betty Nevan, who offer them work, companionship and an opportunity to fit in.

 

But for one of the O’Learys, this new friendship sparks an intense attachment that makes the dynamic dangerous for all. It’s difficult to bury secrets, but almost impossible to bury feelings…

 

Crackling with suspense, Heap Earth Upon It revisits the rural Ireland of Howarth’s critically acclaimed debut and delves into claustrophobic relationships and tangled identities, leaving you wondering who to trust until the very last page. It combines the emotional intensity and slow-burn sapphic obsession of Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea and K. Patrick’s Mrs S. with the unsettling gothic undertones of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Shirley Jackson’s fiction.

 

Gothic, lush, and suspenseful, Chloe Michelle Howarth spins a tangled web that leaves you wondering who to trust until the very last page.

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Sunburn

Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp.

 

It’s the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she’s always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn’t appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend. Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.

 

Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.

 

But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. But only one can offer her real happiness.

 

An atmospheric sapphic love story and coming-of-age novel with the intensity of Megan Nolan’s Acts of Desperation, the long hot summer of André Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name and the female friendships of Anna Hope’s Expectation.