The Sun Is Also a Star (Yoon, Nicola)

I have never felt as close to a writer or a fictional experience as I do to Nicola Yoon and The Sun Is Also a Star. It’s been said that having a wide variety of characters and cultures represented in literature is vital to our understanding of others and for others to understand us, and I’ve made that statement multiple times. What I never thought about before was how important it is to have a wide variety of characters and cultures represented in order to better understand ourselves. I understand myself and my family better because of The Sun is Also A Star. The Sun Is Also a Star is a brilliant representation of humanity, and the roles love, fate, chance, and purpose play in how our world unfolds around us. Sun follows Natasha and David, two teenagers who are at points in their lives when their decisions have more weight, their futures uncertain, and their destinies seemingly in everyone else’s hands but their own. The story takes place over the course of a day, on the busy streets of New York City, and uses a unique narrative consisting of multiple POVs. Nicola Yoon converges lives and shows that even within our own story, the rest of the world matters. Sun is about dreamers. It’s about the romantics and it’s about the realists. It’s about everyone who simply dreams of a life filled with happiness, passion, and love. It’s also about those who practically dream of security and freedom. Sun is about the immigrant story, one that’s more important than ever. Sun follows Daniel, a Korean American boy who doesn’t fit into his family, and doesn’t fit into his country. It’s about Natasha, an undocumented Jamaican immigrant, who would appear more “American” than most Americans, because she certainly doesn’t “act Jamaican” but she’s not and she’s about to be deported. Sun is about our parents, who grew up with dreams as well, and we may or may not have played a part in those dreams. Sun is about the strangers around us, whose decisions can have unforeseeable, and long-lasting effects on our lives. It’s also about the strangers who are also affected by the decisions we make. This is a story I think everyone should experience. It’s both global and intimate. It’s a love story, but also so much more. The characters in this book are layered and multifaceted. The story is thoughtful, profound, romantic, and hopeful. Yes, it’s a teenage love story—one that I fell hard and fast for—but it’s also about family and history. And of course, I was all in once I saw that it’s a reflection of my culture, and myself, and Nicola Yoon brightly showcases the beautiful complexity of my history, the complicated relationships intertwined, the dreams of my past and my future. If you’ve read Everything, Everything, then you’ll recognize the exceptional style of Nicola Yoon’s prose. It’s gorgeous really, and even more so because she has this way of including seemingly random gems and factoids, and making the dry seem poetic. It’s hard to understand unless you’ve read her (read her!), but like Natasha, Nicola is a scientist and a romantic, and when those two combine, magic happens. The Sun Is Also a Star is magic. It’s sweet, it’s meaningful, it’s heartbreaking, it’s buoyant, it sweeps you away, and yet keeps you grounded at the same time. This thought provoking love story is one I had a difficult time reviewing because I didn’t think I could truly convey what it meant to me. I reviewed it, but still haven’t expressed all I felt. I’ll just say that The Sun Is Also a Star shows how love provides hope and reason in a sometimes unfair and unreasonable world, and that message is everything to a romantic in a cynical world. I highly recommend.

This is the second book I've read by Nicola Yoon, and it tells me that her book Everything, Everything, was not. Fluke. What an original voice this writer possesses. As a teen novel, her work stands out for its intelligence and the depth her characters portray. Tackling important and touchy subjects, Yoon moves with grace, while always entertaining her readers, which has to always be at the forefront of any good novel. Like Everything, Everything, this novel centers on the two young people of far different backgrounds and cultures, who fall in love. Natasha is from Jamaica originally, and Daniel is Korean, but born in America. They meet because of what someone might consider 'bad luck', but if fate is at work, as Daniel believes, then everything is a set up because they were meant to fall in love. Natasha relies on science and doesn't believe in love, expect as a chemical reaction. Her father's dream of becoming a great actor has shown her the folly of following your dream, so she follows numbers and decides to be a data specialist, at until her father comes home with a DUI and an order to leave the country he's been staying in illegally for the past nine years. Desperate to stay, Natasha is offered the help of a lawyer, and while on her way to meet with him, she has a series of events that lead her to Daniel, who is also at a crossroads in his life. If he doesn't go to Yale and become a doctor, his parents will cut him off. I love the way Yoon gives a snippets of the people who influence the two lovers lives, helping them to find their fate and meet. Yoon even gives us short definitions of Fate, and how our eyes work, when Daniel suggests that he and Natasha stare into each other's in order to fall in love scientifically. Beautifully written, this novel touched my heart and made me feel like magic is still working in our world, even if it's hard to see sometimes.

A whole page was missing

It was a great book. The adventure gave me the chills. The added character and their stories was interesting. The romance between Natasha and Daniel is adorable, Overall amazing book. I totally recommend reading it!

デビュー作のeverything everythingが良かったので、ついでにという気持ちでこちらも購入しました。個人的にはeverything everythingよりこちらの作品の方が好きです！メインキャラクター2人以外の細かい登場人物の事情や心理描写が細かく書かれていて、面白かったです。英語があまり得意でない方でも読みやすい作品だと思います。前作同様映像化もされるようなので楽しみにしています。

a must-read. the story takes place in a day, but each minute was worth it. you'll love it.

Natasha is an intelligent young woman whose belief in science is absolute. Her dream is to go to college and have a career in a practical and fact-based field. She doesn’t have time for love, fantasy, destiny or fate but as she has only 12 hours left in New York City/America before she and her family are deported back to Jamaica, Natasha might have to rely on any help the universe might offer her. She tries to make a last-ditch attempt to stay in the country but what she doesn’t bank on in her last hours is bumping into a quirky, cute boy and falling for him hard. Daniel has always been the responsible one. The second son of a Korean family who loves him but has made him live in the shadow of his more successful older brother. He worked hard and strove to make his parents proud. When his brother Charlie messes up his previously impressive life by getting kicked out of college, their parents shift their focus onto him. They expect great things including him getting early acceptance at Yale and studying to be a doctor. Neither idea appeals to Daniel as he would rather write poetry about life and love. On his way to his college interview, he meets Natasha and he is determined to prove to her that love truly exists no matter what it takes. With time running out for them to have the future that they dream of, will the universe interfere and send them down a different path together or are they fated to keep the hand they were dealt while being separated in the process? 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 I loved the setup for this story. Daniel and Natasha are complete opposites but somehow the fact that their lives are shaped both by their families and societal circumstance gives them a common bond. Daniel's sweetness softens Natasha's hard outlook on life while Natasha's pragmatic and strongminded spirit inspires Daniel to stand up for himself. They complement and empower each other as they fall in love. It was a complicated and emotional story that kept me gripped until the very last line. Beautifully written with incredible characters. I highly recommend it.