ARC Review | The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon

Title: The Sun Is Also A Star
Author: Nicola Yoon
Publication: November 1st 2016 by Delacorte Press
Format: Advance Reading Copy
Source: Provided by the publisher
ISBN: 9780553496680

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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?

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I received an ARC of this book from Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review. By no means have my review been affected and/or influenced.

After having read Everything, Everything, I since have had a mental note that any book written by Nicola Yoon is one to anticipate. There’s no need to tell that I have high expectations for The Sun Is Also A Star because I definitely do. And now that I’ve finally read it, I don’t know how to begin with sharing how blown away I am with this incredible and one of a kind story.

The Sun Is Also A Star follows Natasha and Daniel and their love story set in a whole day around New York City. Natasha is bound to get deported back to Jamaica after she and her family are discovered to be undocumented immigrants, she’s desperate to stop the deportation and she has less than a day to make it happen. Meanwhile, Daniel has an admission interview with Yale, which he thinks is the beginning of the end of his future. Daniel doesn’t want to become a doctor, he doesn’t even want to go to Yale, so he spends his remaining hours before the interview to do whatever he feels like doing. Their paths cross, and the rest is up to fate to do its thing.

First of all, I just love stories of fate and destiny. I love that it’s something out of our control but still leads us to the moment that’s meant to be. Natasha is a non-believer of these things. She claims she’s a realist and doesn’t believe that things happen for a reason.

Things don’t happen for a reason. They just happen.

For a story that has a lot to do with fate, having a character like Natasha and Daniel made everything more interesting. While Natasha doesn’t believe in fate, Daniel is a romantic. (His Koi No Yokan thing? Ah… SWOOOON! Did I mention he’s Korean? MORE SWOON!) You can only imagine what’s gonna happen next or how the characters will react to the the events in this book. The character development is very natural and not forced that I sometimes forget that everything that’s going on is in a span of a single day. How is that even possible? Don’t doubt fate. Or the author.

Ms. Nicola has a distinct writing style that you can easily identify. It has the effect that will make you guarantee that you are reading a book written by her. The short chapters and the unconventional storytelling are definitely her niche. She just makes it work in every book she writes. I can’t think of a different way Natasha and Daniel’s story be told.

Speaking of the narrative, the book wasn’t only in Natasha or Daniel’s POV, there were a lot of different perspectives coming from people or things they encounter, and what’s great about it is that we get to see what lead them to that exact moment, how their choices and actions affected other people’s fate and just how everything works together and are bound to happen.

Maybe he wasn’t meant to meet Natasha today. Maybe it was random chance after all.
But.
Once they met, the rest of it, the love between them, was inevitable.

The ending just proved how fate worked in Natasha and Daniel’s lives. It’s such a touching moment that I just keep reading it over and over. It’s a beautiful story and the ending was just perfect. Absoultely, incredibly, the best epilogue I’ve read.

The Sun Is Also A Star is a definite must-read. For lovers of swoon-worthy reads like me, this is not to be missed. For those who aren’t, maybe you’ll have a change of heart, just like Natasha? 🙂

Rating:

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• Natasha & Daniel – Of course, these 2! I love Natasha and Daniel and they will have a special place in my heart for being the most adorable characters ever. Anyway, I noticed how the characters names are somewhat a representation of Nicola and David??? Also, they’re Jamaican American and Korean American respectively and I’m not doubting that this was inspired by the story of how they met, and the rest is an adorable book called The Sun Is Also A Star. 🙂

• The cover – Unlike some covers that are aesthetically pleasing, this one has a different reason why I like love it. TSIAAS’s cover is some sort of a representation of what the whole book is telling us. I couldn’t find the best words to explain it but the good thing is Nicola already did, in her letter for her readers, she said, “We are-all of us-connected. The threads weave through and around us all. It’s only for us to see them.” I don’t know why but it spoke to me more than what it is, a book cover. I really appreciate the fact that even that single detail is telling a story. Don’t even get me started with the effort put into making it, just go check out the cover making video!

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Book description and cover image from Goodreads