Genres: contemporary, YA Contemporary, YA Romance
Pages: 384
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Goodreads
Natasha: I’m a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Not destiny. Or dreams that will never come true. I’m definitely not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a crowded New York City street and falls in love with him. Not when my family is twelve hours away from being deported to Jamaica. Falling in love with him won’t be my story.
Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, the good student, living up to my parents’ high expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. But when I see her, I forget about all that. Something about Natasha makes me think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store—for both of us.
The Universe: Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true?
Catfairy’s Booktape
Natasha is my ultimate music twin due to our mutual love of 90’s grunge and Daniel is a poet so of course, Bob Dylan is the perfect mix to add into this playlist! Here is a little bit of Eddie Vedder, Dylan, Chris Cornell, and some good old teen spirit!
Catfairy’s Starry Bookish Babbles
When I finished listening to Nicola Yoon’s book I rewinded the ending like seventeen times because my heart couldn’t handle that the book was over! The book had all the elements of being a fluffy book while showing the intensity of first love. She writes the feelings of first love the way a sixteen-year-old actually experiences first love. Yoon brings you back to the days when falling in love is an all-encompassing feeling and it’s all you think about, ruminate about, sing about, write about, and obsessively dream about as if your own life depends on it!
Catnopsis
“I see us in old age. I can’t see our faces; I don’t even know where or even when we are. But I have a strange and happy feeling that I can’t quite describe. It’s like knowing all the words to a song but still finding them beautiful and surprising.”
-Daniel
Daniel and Natasha are in a record store in New York and from the moment Daniel lays eyes on Natasha he has a feeling he is going to spend the rest of his life with her…
But he has approximately twelve hours to convince her to fall in love with him…
Natasha is a girl about facts and science and currently, she has a hard time facing reality. Her family is about to get deported and she has twelve hours to try to get her family to stay in New York and then she bumps into Daniel in the record store and her whole world changes.
Daniel has always been the perfect son but faces pressure from his family to be someone that he is not when all he wants is to be a poet. He is a boy who lives in his own head and is a true romantic at heart. When he meets Natasha he sees his own future right before his eyes…
Pop Culture Purr-References
I know I have mentioned this pop culture reference just recently but obvi Before Sunrise has been on my mind lately! I really need to watch it tonight and just get it over with!
But honestly, The Sun is Also a Star perfectly represents the insta-love that Before Sunrise does!
Nicola Yoon’s Writing
The chapters in this book are written in the point of view of the characters and this is my favorite kind of book because I love books that are character driven more than plot driven. Even though the chapters are mainly dedicated to the main characters Natasha and Daniel, there are surprise chapters from the strangers they meet along the way such as the security guard from the immigration office and even the etymological history of the Jamaican term irie!
Nicola Yoon represents diverse characters in her story with Natasha being Jamaican and Daniel being Korean American. Not only does Yoon represent the characters diverse backgrounds in this story, but she also touches on immigration which is a hot topic in our Trump era. The author writes about the struggles about facing deportation and really humanizes the struggle of immigration.
Glittery Introspections
The format that I used to read The Sun is Also a Star was a mix of reading and listening but I was listening to this book 70% of the time. If I wasn’t listening to this book for most of the time I would have probably tabbed almost the whole book because the language was even more lyrical than Yoon’s last book Everything, Everything.
Nicola Yoon is becoming the queen of insta-love but she is one of the few authors that REALLY knows how to write insta-love! This book captures the exhilarating experience of running around New York while falling in love! What can be better than that?!
More importantly, this is a book about fate and about how everything is connected in some way or another and that was one of the most beautiful things about this book! This book teaches us how strangers can sometimes have a significant impact on our lives when we aren’t even aware of it.