Hardcover, 348 pages
Published November 1st 2016 by Delacorte Press
Rating: ★★★★
I won The Sun is Also a Star in a Shelf Awareness giveaway. I entered knowing very little about it beyond that it was a young adult romance. I don't often read romance, either adult or young adult. It's not really a genre that greatly appeals to me, particularly heterosexual romances. I feel like I'm inundated with them at all times, in life, in media, in everything. It gets tiring.
Despite that, The Sun is Also a Star still felt like a breath of fresh air that frequently caused me to smile while reading. To start with, neither of the lead characters, Natasha or Daniel, are white. That's certainly rare in a sea of blonde teenage adonises and blue eyed heroines. Natasha is an undocumented Jamaican girl on the cusp of being deported due to a drunken mistake of her father's. She loves science, believes wholeheartedly provable facts, and likes the crackling pain in 90s grunge music. Daniel is the American born son of Korean immigrants, struggling between his parents' educational desires for him and his own dreams of being a poet. They're both adorable, wholly fleshed out characters that I really, truly liked.
Natasha walks the knife edge of cynical, having experienced enough disappointment to find baseless optimism frustrating. It's why she relies so heavily on science. However, I really liked that she connects deeply to her favourite music, it moves her in a non-scientific, unquantifiable way and that is what attracts Daniel to her. In other male characters, Daniel's actions might have come across as pushy or aggressive, but I found Daniel to be genuine enough that he came across as sweet and earnest. That genuineness is what inspires Natasha to open up to him.
The Sun is Also a Star takes places almost entirely over a single day, which gave the book an almost cinematic quality. It wasn't hard to imagine two cute teenagers walking starry-eyed all over New York. The Sun is Also a Star isn't just about Natasha and Daniel falling in love in a few hours, it's about racism, the underage victims of immigration policy, and overall, the connectedness of humanity. It's the final point that really made me like the book.
The chapters are short, only a few pages, alternating the perspectives of Daniel and Natasha while also tossing in short interludes like the history of black hair, why the security guard at a building delayed Natasha, why Daniel has an Anglo first name and a Korean middle name. I loved it. I thought it added another dimension, gave you background into who Natasha and Daniel are, furthering the idea that we are not only ourselves but also products of our own history.
Overall, I found The Sun is Also a Star to be sweet, touching and thoroughly enjoyable. I'm definitely going to look out for Nicola Yoon's books in the future.
Despite that, The Sun is Also a Star still felt like a breath of fresh air that frequently caused me to smile while reading. To start with, neither of the lead characters, Natasha or Daniel, are white. That's certainly rare in a sea of blonde teenage adonises and blue eyed heroines. Natasha is an undocumented Jamaican girl on the cusp of being deported due to a drunken mistake of her father's. She loves science, believes wholeheartedly provable facts, and likes the crackling pain in 90s grunge music. Daniel is the American born son of Korean immigrants, struggling between his parents' educational desires for him and his own dreams of being a poet. They're both adorable, wholly fleshed out characters that I really, truly liked.
Natasha walks the knife edge of cynical, having experienced enough disappointment to find baseless optimism frustrating. It's why she relies so heavily on science. However, I really liked that she connects deeply to her favourite music, it moves her in a non-scientific, unquantifiable way and that is what attracts Daniel to her. In other male characters, Daniel's actions might have come across as pushy or aggressive, but I found Daniel to be genuine enough that he came across as sweet and earnest. That genuineness is what inspires Natasha to open up to him.
The Sun is Also a Star takes places almost entirely over a single day, which gave the book an almost cinematic quality. It wasn't hard to imagine two cute teenagers walking starry-eyed all over New York. The Sun is Also a Star isn't just about Natasha and Daniel falling in love in a few hours, it's about racism, the underage victims of immigration policy, and overall, the connectedness of humanity. It's the final point that really made me like the book.
The chapters are short, only a few pages, alternating the perspectives of Daniel and Natasha while also tossing in short interludes like the history of black hair, why the security guard at a building delayed Natasha, why Daniel has an Anglo first name and a Korean middle name. I loved it. I thought it added another dimension, gave you background into who Natasha and Daniel are, furthering the idea that we are not only ourselves but also products of our own history.
Overall, I found The Sun is Also a Star to be sweet, touching and thoroughly enjoyable. I'm definitely going to look out for Nicola Yoon's books in the future.
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