The Sun Is Also a Star Paperback – March 5, 2019

Great read!!! I’ve read it over 10 times!!!

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 kind of book that would’ve been perfect except for one thing: I did not root for them to be together.Yes, they had chemistry but since it all happened in one day, I still feel that everything was a little bit rushed.Daniel said it well.“Our history is too compressed. We’re trying to fit a lifetime into a day.”And yes, I get the point that this was all supposed to happen in a day. But I’m not really a big fan of instalove so I didn’t like that part much. I also had a little problem with the ending. Everything was perfect and I was about to give this five stars since it kind of negated the instalove part.Aside from that everything was perfect.THE CHARACTERSDaniel. Surprisingly, I connected a lot more with Daniel than with Natasha. He is like the guy version of me. He writes poems, does things he’s supposed to, and a hopeless romantic. I think he is the most unique male lead among all the books I have ever read. His character was well developed and I really got to know him throughout the whole book. Most books will focus more on the female lead but this one had balance and I admire Nicola Yoon for that.Natasha. Honestly, I had a hard time picturing Natasha. After reading this book, I realized I have never really read books with black characters. And that’s one of the best things about this book. Natasha is not your typical female lead. I love how she and Daniel are complete opposites. She believes in science and he believes in destiny. Most of the time, it’s the other way around.The side characters. This is also one of the best parts of the book. Aside from the two main characters, we get snippets of other people’s stories. I love how everything was well connected. Life is indeed a chain reaction of events, seemingly unrelated, but when you look at it as a whole, it is actually connected to one another, no matter how small that connection might be.THE PLOTThe plot is not very complicated but the way it was delivered was really great. I like to think of it as a river. Everything flowed smoothly, the transition was perfect and it was somewhat realistic, even if you don’t believe in destiny and all that stuff.THE WRITINGNicola Yoon writes beautifully. This book is probably my most highlighted book ever and I even wanted to highlight a whole chapter (it is Half-Life, in case you want to know). She is the kind of author that writes books that you want to devour and read every word. Not a single word is wasted on her. I just read the excerpt of Everything, Everything at the end of this book and I think I’m going to read that next.Overall, this book was great. It is better than some of the books I gave five stars to so I feel a little bad for giving this only four. But I rate books based on feeling and I let my emotions rule when I read. Sadly, this one lacked a little of that feeling that I always look for.This is a book that I would recommend to those who want books that make you think. While reading this, it made me contemplate about life, destiny, science, equality, and well, everything really.

Such a good book, written very nicely, easy read. Character development and relationship development throughout is very detailed and good!! I want a second book!!