YMMV / Sunkissed

• Audience-Alienating Premise: When the story was first announced through its first two ads, many players were alienated by its premise on finding summer love, assuming that the story will be boring and cheesy as a result.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Gayle. One group has called her out on her cold and distant behavior such as walking out of her own husband's funeral and the narrative instructing the player at one point to avoid dialogue options that would remind her of him. Another group defends her by saying that people deal with grief in different ways and the beach house possibly brings back painful memories.
  • Nate. Some people like him for being an adorable, charming, and supportive sweetheart. Others dislike him for being a delusional and inept lifeguard who insists on being the only person qualified to be lifeguard yet sent mere trainees to rescue Aria when she gets pulled into a riptide. In Chapter 10, he makes several jokes and suggestive comments about Gayle and Bill's sex life, which many players find inappropriate.
• Broken Base: The story dealing with the issue of grief and mourning has mixed reviews among players. Some of them welcome it because they believe it's important to address such topics no matter how sensitive they seem. They also find the Kerseys' behaviors realistic no matter how melodramatic because of the effects of grief in individual relationships. Others think it has no place on the story because they were looking for a light-hearted summer read on Aria discovering her family's roots and possibly finding summer love.
• Designated Villain: Bob Beamer. The narrative depicts him in negative light for wanting to sell the Kerseys' summer house under Gayle's request, but his actions ultimately show him as merely doing his job as a realtor. It is somewhat justified towards the end of the story when he refused to cooperate with, or at least listen to, how Gayle wanted to renovate the house, as well as insulting both Aria and Alexis.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Some players have nicknamed this series "Home for the Holidays: Summer Edition" or "Big Sky Country: Beach Edition" due to the simple and generic premise involving a small town and family drama. Others have called it "Sunblocked" or "Sunburnt" to express their disdain for it.
  • Alexis has been mockingly called as "Brooklynne's evil twin" or "Anti-Brooklynne" due to her resemblance to Brooklynne Shao-Oakley from Big Sky Country while being The Scrappy instead of an Ensemble Dark Horse.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Marinara sauce - Since Chapter 3, when Alexis realized that she forgot the special marinara sauce necessary for her father's special lasagna recipe, the fandom picked it up as a mocking joke on the book.
  • "Will Nate be able to save you?" "I hope not!"- Chapter 11 ends with Aria being pulled into a riptide and the narrative asks at the end if Nate will be able to save her. It has become a recurring joke for detractors to say "I hope not!" because they believe that if Aria dies, then the story will end.
  • "So-and-so goes missing": Given that much "conflict" from the story comes from stuff going missing, many detractors have used this as a way to mock the book's narrative.
• Narm: Many of the chapter-ending cliffhangers are extremely anticlimactic. Examples include the Kersey sisters discovering that their preferred brand of marinara sauce is sold out, Alexis's favorite sweatshirt is missing, Eliana's turtle is missing, and Samson's key doesn't work.
• The Scrappy: Many dislike Alexis for being a brat who acts classist and elitist towards people that are either nerds or have a low social standing. The rage against her raised in Chapter 8, after Gayle tries to be nice after their night out, Alexis once again makes it all about herself because she wanted to skip family breakfast to go on a date.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Chapter 10 gives Aria the chance to call out Alexis on her bratty behavior. Many decided to go this path, especially since Alexis had previously thrown a tantrum over a sweater.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Many players felt that the story puts too much emphasis on the Kerseys going through their grief of losing Bill that the premise on enjoying summer at a small beach town is given too little focus. In Turtle Bay's case, it could've been a small town struggling with the challenges of beach tourism, such as the environment, local cultures struggling to adapt, behavior of tourists, and rising cost of living, which would allow the story to address the issue of tourism while staying true to its premise.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Winnie, Samson’s ex-wife. The story tries to paint her as the one to blame for the divorce because of her introduction and the way she treats Pebbles, the French Terrier dog she adopted with Samson, who is allergic to dogs. If one thinks about it, Samson didn’t want to have kids with her (which that alone questions why he married Winnie in the first place), and the dog she adopted to try filling the void with serves as a reminder of that bitter divorce. Some players have criticized the writers for rendering her to a Flat Character nagging ex-wife to make Samson sympathetic as a Love Interest.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Gayle and Alexis are supposed to be sympathetic because they're a grieving mother and daughter who miss their husband and father, but not once did they take each other's opinions into account and care about the needless emotional harm they have caused. Not helping matters is that they dragged Aria into their mess.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: One of the premium outfits for Aria consisted on fishnets, a leather miniskirt, and a black see-through top. For a stakeout surveillance at the beach. It was neither practical nor stealthy, but the game tried to sell it like it was the coolest outfit for the occasion.