I received a free copy of this book through Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion or my review of the book in any way. Many thanks to the publisher for providing me with this eARC!
by Nicola Yoon
Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Publication date: November 3, 2016
Paperback, 348 pages
My rating: 4.5/5 ★
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?
The Sun is Also a Star turned out to be everything I had hoped it would be: a cute contemporary romance that went deeper than just two teenagers falling in love.
The story of Natasha and David takes place in only one day, and while I think this really helped emphasize the seriousness of Natasha's situation (i.e. trying to do anything to not have to leave the country), it did make the romance aspect of the story a little too instalovey for me. Since this is really the only aspect of this whole book that I had slight problems with, I want to get it out of the way now: I am not a fan of instalove, and I do not believe that falling in love in one day is possible. But I will say that reading this book made me question this view a little. The way Natasha and David meet, and especially the way David is absolutely convinced from the beginning that they are meant to be together, definitely made me want to believe it too. So while two people falling in love in such a short period of time would usually ruin a book for me, with The Sun is Also a Star, it only made me take off a half star. That's how well written this book was. It definitely did make me feel all the feels, so there's no need to deny that I enjoyed the romance even if it all happens in one day.
My favorite part of the story was without a doubt the cultural aspects, even more so the dynamics of both Natasha's and David's family. I don't want to give anything away by talking about it, but let me just say that I was deeply impressed with how the topic of immigration and especially second-generation immigrants was presented. This story especially made me understand the perspective of David's parents who came to America for their children to have better lives, which I thought was extremely interesting.
Overall I think this book is extremely well written, and the way it's told from various different points of view made it even more special and unique. I also especially loved the ending, which was a very positive surprise for me as I hadn't liked the ending of Nicola Yoon's first book, Everything, Everything, very much.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone! If you, like me, can't usually deal with instalove, I'd still say give this book a go, and try to look over this fact in order to see the by far more important and (in my opinion) extremely enjoyable and interesting aspects of this story.