Sun Is Also a Star

by Nicola Yoon

No cover — Nicola Yoon: Sun Is Also a Star (2016, Random House Children's Books)

English language

Published 2016 by Random House Children's Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-553-49669-7

(6 reviews)

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?

21 editions

jayvall reviewed The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

Review of 'The Sun is Also a Star' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

This was closer to a 2.5 for me. At about 80% through, I tweeted, "I don't understand what people liked so much about this book" and having finished it, I still don't. The end did bring a lot of threads together in a way that was satisfying - though strained the bounds of belief for me. But the whole premise of the book was about straining the bounds of belief in some ways, so the ending wasn't that much of a detractor. For me, I just wasn't as captivated by Natasha and Daniel as I think I was supposed to be. I really hated the mini interludes narrated by other characters and I thought it was a clunky way to escape the confines of your story to provide the reader with information they'll need. I also didn't like the simple way the Jamaican accents were portrayed and I expected someone born in Jamaica to do a more nuanced job of it.

I read this mainly because it checks off one of the prompts in a reading challenge I'm doing for a book that takes place in only one day. The fact that it was being made into a movie was a bonus, in case I liked it. I didn't but now I'm interested in seeing how the movie is going to handle the dueling viewpoints.

Gossamerchild reviewed The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

Review of 'The Sun is Also a Star' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

Demoted to 3 stars simply for the jarringly unrealistic conversation between Daniel and his Yale interviewer. I'm still not clear as to why an immigration lawyer would be doing a college interview for someone wanting to be a doctor in the first place. And he doesn't kick Daniel out of his office immediately after catching him looking at a client's file? And really, he f**ks up Natasha's chance to stay in the US because he's distracted by his unbelievably inappropriate feelings for his paralegal?!? Ugh, that stereotype needs to die a fast painful death. I was distracted by those scenes that I failed to enjoy a huge section of the book. Other than that, this was definitely a 4-star book.