The Sun-Room

by Jess Watts

Jess was a healthy young woman in her early twenties, newly graduated from university when she was struck down with Chronic Fatigue. Here she writes of a lost past and a halted present in which despair rotates with hope. It will speak to anyone who is stalled because of chronic illness or ill health.This is not a ME memoir or a journey back to health but a vivid description of an uncertain present and a future that us not known. The Sun- Room cuts through the pain of losing yourself to chronic illness to reveal an angry, envious, devastated, and sun- soaked core. It is a scream of anguish. An annihilating and liberating exploration of self-identity. A gentle surrender to the present.

Genres: Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir

69 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 3, 2025

Reviews

[lissa]

“I am a balance of grief and gratitude.”

If there was ever a book that wanted to transcended the tone of anger and rage it’s this one and it did it effortlessly.

She’s angry and justifiably so, having had everything (autonomy of the body) to now having immense fatigue with completing simple tasks—the unfairness of it all.

Bc that’s it right? Luck? Who decides, who goes: “Oh you, yes you. You will lose your mobility”. Bc if there is someone out there picking and choosing, the audacity.

This book is for us! For the grieving and the anger and the healing. It’s okay to vent and scream and cry. It’s okay to heal in any manner so long as that’s the priority.

“Do something grand and extraordinary to make your sickness relevant, says society. We want our disabled, shiny and productive.”

[thank you @circesreadingtrove @linenpressbooks for this gifted copy, out now!]

[Hannah]

The Weight of the Past, the Ghost of the Future, and Living with a Chronic Illness
Read my full review with love from, hannah

I want to start this review by recognising Watts’ craft. Her words are lyrical, deep and her prose is written with great expertise. It’s immediately noticeable in the prologue. I am usually more favourable to books written with a third person omniscient narrator, but The Sun-Room would not be as brilliant as it is without it. By reading The Sun-Room, I have decided it’s because most books written with a first person point of view feel blasé. Jess Watts does not shy away from expressing the full range of emotions and experiences. More writers should take a leaf out of her book.

I’ll hold my hands up and say that I don’t read a lot of literature by disabled authors and/or with characters and narrators. Reading The Sun-Room has been an educational, enjoyable and eye-opening experience. The range of emotions Watts confesses on page: anger, envy, sadness, yearning, fear of exclusion, nostalgia and eventually peace is phenomenal, serving as a reminder that people living with disabilities are human too. Yes, their day-to-day may be different, but that does not make them any less. One particular concoction of emotions has made a home within my mind: Watts expresses how she is not typically angry person, but her chronic illness is making them so. And this makes her feel alive. Her anger brews an energy within—whilst this sequence is fuelled fully by grief. Grief of the person she once was. Grief of the future version of herself she can no longer be. What was particularly memorable was how layered and vulnerable it is. Watts’ emotional intelligence transcends the fourth wall and arrives in the reader’s heart with a warmed message of acknowledgment and visibility, “You are here! And so am I!”

Thank you to the team at Linen Press for giving me the chance to read, review and experience this phenomenal debut. Like I mentioned above, it's been an educational and eye opening experience.

The Sun-Room by Jess Watts releases 3rd April 2025 from Linen Press

[Britta]

I think of art as anything that makes you feel. And let me say, when not even a few pages into a book you're overcome with hot anger, it's bound to unravel you. The second entry left me in tears within one page.

To experience the entirety of human emotion in some 70 or so pages was anticipated, yet still left me ripped me open and left me sometimes literally gasping.

[Sophia Dinsley]

beautiful, evocative piece of literature. entirely relatable in the idea of losing yourself, and grieving that version of yourself that you’re missing. raw, vulnerable, touching and profound—a must read!

[aimee]

This book had some parts that really hit home for me and it's always a good feeling knowing you're not alone. Living with a chronic illness is super lonely, even when you've got love and support. It's a daily struggle, both physically and mentally, and it's exhausting.

When you feel like things are getting better your body just gaslights the s*** out of you.

[Lucy]

A deeply moving piece of writing that details the Visceral reality of living in a body that does not work and behave as you want it too.
Takes you on a journey of grief, grieving for yourself, your loss of future and loss of hope. Through the writing it feels like we are witnessing the working processing of acceptance.
As a fellow chronic illness sufferer I believe we never truly will have acceptance; but within these chapters you learn that the writer tries to become at peace with their present situation.
Deeply moving and thought provoking.
The flashes of the before illness and after life, offer a reality of the comparisons we are forced to face on a daily basis.
The complex feelings of just surviving whilst you watch those around you truely live. I loved the writers honesty towards the feeling of jealousy and envy. An emotion that can be hard to admit, but one that becomes entirely confronting when negative change is forced upon you.
There is no right way to grieve yourself, there is no right way to accept the brutal changes faced with chronic illness. But the Sun Room gives you an honest reality of what that is like.
If you want to understand the thoughts and realities of someone with Myalgic Encephalomitis or someone struggling with a chronic illness, I strongly suggest reading this book.

[Vincent]

Jess has a way of writing that makes you feel like you are in the room with her. The Sun-Room is a deeply emotive piece, sometimes catching you off guard, even as you anticipate the objective pains of living with a chronic condition. The core themes of grief, anger, and a longing for the past feels profoundly real, because they are so strikingly raw and each page is seemingly unsanitised.

I cannot begin to imagine what it must feel like to assemble the words in such a way - to convey the complex and overwhelming emotions that Jess has experienced these last few years. It's clear that it would have taken a great deal of skill, honesty, and determination to be able to craft The Sun-Room. It feels like a privilege to be involved in her life in some manner by way of reading her work, and to have this on my shelf.

[Reader]

“She asked me what the hardest thing was. I told her it was wasted potential.”

A book of beautiful language used to describe the kind of pain you ignore until it’s knocking on your door.
I felt seen and heard throughout reading this and I will recommend it to whoever stood to listen (and those that don’t bother).
Thank you Jess, for the dedication, hard work, and bravery it took to put your experience into words.

[Gillian]

one of the rare, special things about reading is the opportunity to see through someone else's eyes, to feel their experiences first hand – their pain, their grief, their anger. this is a brief memoir on watts' experience as her life completely changed as a result of chronic illness. it's so vulnerable at points i felt like i wasn't supposed to read it, but it's moving and remarkably honest.

thanks to linen press & jess watts for a review copy of this.