You Know The Sun Bothers Me - Ryan Falzon

School’s out for summer, and for our unnamed narrator, that means three months away from his physics high school students to tinker with his ancient Fiat 131 and fret about his all-consuming obsession: Sarah, a tempestuous artist he met online. They sleep together, they text obsessively, but as July’s barbecues and boat trips segue into August’s festi, their intimate moments always reset into platonic disappointment, and she increasingly ghosts him in favour of an ever-changing group of new besties. A sensation on its home island, this book gives poignant voice to a regular guy in his early thirties, trying to get a grip on love, life and growing up, and it paints a high-octane portrait of what it means to live in the hedonistic, overcrowded, workaholic, claustrophobic, contradictory mind-blast that is Malta.