Beautiful story, wonderful diversity. Definitely not something I'll be forgetting any time soon. Truly, one of a kind.

I received a copy from Netgalley.

I don’t really know what to say on this one. I was really looking forward to it as I absolutely loved the author’s debut, Everything Everything, which I just devoured. But I just couldn’t get into this one. It wasn’t a bad book really. The characters were delightfully diverse, the two leads, Daniel and Natasha had fantastic chemistry and a believable romance in a tough situation. I thought it was handled fairly realistically. 

But…I just didn’t like it. It just didn’t work for me. The premise is an interesting one. Daniel comes from a Korean family who immigrated to America, his dad runs a pharmacy. His brother Charlie has always been the high achiever of the family, though has recently come home from college in disgrace. Daniel has always been in Charlie’s shadow. His parents have very high expectations of him. (Charlie is an absolute dick). Daniel is a more sensitive soul, he has a big university interview, he’s not sure what he wants to do with his life. He has a quirky, almost snarky tone of voice. He likes to write poetry. 

Natasha’s family came over from Jamaica, her family all live in one small apartment, her dad had dreams of being an actor. He’s got great talent, but can’t seem to get a break, Natasha has a younger brother, and a hard working mom. Natasha herself is very smart and loves science. Her dad got drunk and wound up spilling their family history to a police officer, including telling the police they are illegal immigrants. And now Natasha and her family are twelve hours away from being deported. 

Natasha is determined to make one last stab at saving her family from deportation by meeting with a lawyer who specialises in deportation cases. Stopping in a record store a chance meeting leads her to run into Daniel on the way to his interview. 

They spark a great connection and start to get to know each other, despite the fact that both of them have places to be and a limited time, their connection is so…just there…they keep finding ways to keep the conversation going; Daniel is more optimistic and romantic. Natasha is a lot more practical and logical. 

While they both have great voices, I think what really distracted from their story was random chapters from a whole other points of view. Various characters who have random interactions with both Natasha and Daniel, and whole chapters of random information about things that are relevant in the novel. Sometimes sciency things. 

There was an almost quirky tone of voice to the while thing, but it felt to me like it was trying to be clever and funny, but it just came across as distracting from the main story. And by half way through these chapters were making my eyes roll more than anything. Even though they all had a part of play in the eventual story. 

It did at least have a believable ending, which I did like, a realistic tone to it. I wouldn’t particularly read this book again, but I do love this this author. 

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House UK Children’s for approving my request to view the title.

Natasha is about to be deported. She's trying everything she can to get her family to be able to stay in the US but she's booked on a flight that night. While she's running about NYC speakng to different lawyers and people who could maybe help she bumps into Daniel who is having a bit of a crisis over what he wants to do with his life. Daniel is immediately smitten but Natasha tries to hold herself back knowing that she

This is an example of when insta-love just really works. People have a big hatred for insta-love, and personally I'm not really for or against it. If it's really bad then I hate it but with YA you're reading about teenagers, I don't know about you but when I was a teen I definitely suffered from insta-love.

I really enjoyed how this book played with fate. I loved learning the stories of the random people that the MCs bumped into, getting to see how their lives were changed from that run in. Seeing how people's lives were so intertwined that they kept bumping into each other without even trying.

This was everything I wanted from a book about illegal immigrants that I didn't get from Something in Between by Melissa De La Cruz, which whilst a completely different story and background definitely felt really cliche at times. This book felt so real, it felt so lifelike, I loved getting to read about both Natasha and Daniel and their lives, but also their families lives. Everyone had their own story of how they got to where they were in life.

I loved how the book played off stereotypes, like Daniel being a super smart Korean kid and his parents wanting him to be a doctor, but he didn't want to do that and wasn't really sure what he was going to do with his life, and his brother wanting to completely immerse himself in American culture and forget his Korean roots.

This book was just an absolute joy to read to be honest. The writing style flowed so well and I think I read it in 1 sitting. You got just enough of each POV before a change so that you didn't feel short changed but also didn't get sick of that characters voice. I just really loved this book.

Sarah has done it again. Another great plot and wonderful characters. A definite must for school, pupils will love it.

I'm sorry but I just did not get this.
It was slow and just plain silly.
Not for me.

After her bestseller-turned-movie, „Everything, Everything“, Nicola Yoon has written an enchanting New York love story that reads like a modern fairytale.

Daniel is a Korean-American teenager living in New York City, struggling with his parents‘ ambitions for his life. They want him to go to college and become a doctor or a lawyer. Daniel, instead, wants to become a poet. He (literally) runs into Natasha who, together with her Jamaican family, is facing deportation. Their flight is supposed to leave on the same day, and Natasha is desperate to find a last-minute way to stay in the United States.

Changing back and forth between Daniel’s and Natasha’s POV, interspersed with explanatory „dictionary entries“ and the POVs of different people they meet, Yoon squeezes an epic YA love story into this single day. It is full of fateful coincidences and seemingly insignificant encounters which turn out to be life-changing. Little things that happen to, with and around these two instant lovers prove to be of huge impact. There is the constant feeling of interconnection, of „meant-to-be“, and when, in the end, things come full circle after all, the reader closes the book with a happy sigh – and the realization of having read a fairytale that doesn’t happen in real life.

Daniel and Natasha, on the one hand, are typical teenage fiction characters. They fit into defined molds. Daniel is the dreamer who writes poems in his little notebook, secretly rejecting his parent’s expectations yet not daring to openly rebel against them. He believes in love at first sight, in shooting stars and fate.

Natasha, in a nice upside-down-turn to the usual boy/girl cliché, is driven by logic and believes in science and numbers and facts. She holds a deep grudge against her father, a failed actor, and blames him for their imminent deportation.

These two, as different as they are, find each other, and sparks fly. They follow each other through the day and through New York, lose sight of one another and, with fate clearly intervening, stumble upon each other again. They meet each other’s families, struggle with questions of ethnic identity, expectations and prejudices. Daniel strings Natasha along by means of a questionnaire which, when completed, is supposed to have made them irreversibly fall in love with each other. Natasha is determined to prove him wrong (and, of course, fails hopelessly).

Daniel softens Natasha’s factual, unsentimental approach to life. Natasha, in turn, helps the hopeless romantic Daniel touch ground. To a certain degree. After all, this is a YA love story, and there is the appropriate emotional drama and unfathomable depth typical for this genre. The world seems to stand still around these two as they hold hands in the subway or kiss on a rooftop and feel as star-crossed as any teenage couple has ever felt. Plus, with all the side characters whose depressing stories magically get turned around by chance encounters with Daniel and Natasha, this story screams fairytale around every corner.

Compared with „Everything, Everything“, Daniel and Natasha feel a bit more complex, a tad more interesting. Yoon plays with gender roles, assigning each of them traits and talents usually expected of the opposite sex. Being Jamaican-born herself, Yoon gives Natasha’s complicated sense of identity and association a very authentic feel.

All in all, „The Sun Is Also A Star“ is an incredibly romantic teenage love story touching upon the serious issues of immigration, deportation and what it means to identify as „American“. In the final few pages, just when the reader thinks Yoon gives her own beautiful story a realistic punch in the gut, she turns the whole thing around into a delayed happily-ever-after. Is that a smart decision? It’s not what happens in real life. But it certainly feels good to believe that, once in a while, it does.

Nicola Yoon’s books are definitely illustrious in the book community. I’ve heard so many things about her works that I knew sooner or later I’ll read something of hers as well. As it seems, the time has come.

The Sun Is Also A Star centers around a science-minded girl who is trying to keep her family from being deported, a romantic boy on his way to an interview, and everything in between. Natasha doesn’t believe in fate while Daniel is convinced their meeting is anything but chance. As they spend the day together, he tries to convince her that they belong together by the way of the universe. Natasha is determined not to prove him right, but as they spend the day together Daniel’s words start to make sense.

I’ve been eyeing this book for a long time, partly because of the hype and mostly because of the cover. I saw it at the city book fair’s foreign editions stall and it was in that moment that it was decided that I’ll definitely be reading it (because at least I can find a copy here, which is a rarity.) Then I saw it on NetGalley and well, here I am. (Granted, a few months late, but still here.) To be quite honest, it’s been a month and I still don’t know how I feel about this book exactly.

The writing style is nice and distinctive. It captures both Natasha’s science-oriented mind and Daniel’s poetry-inclined character perfectly without the two bleeding into each other. I also really enjoyed the added perspectives – they remind you that each person you pass has their own story to live and write about. There were also some nice science facts, which I greatly appreciated. Everything tied together very nicely.

The characters, by themselves, were well-written and I enjoyed getting to know them. Natasha’s struggle and her determination to do anything possible not to have her family deported stick out and I wish we’d gotten more of that side of the story. I enjoyed Daniel’s side as well, feeling his parents’ pressure and his internal dilemma with following through with their expectations or following his own dreams. The book looks light and fun, but it holds some real weight and its characters carry it all on their shoulders.

The reason I’m still not sure how I feel about this book is the romance part – which takes up a huge chunk. On the one hand, I found it cute and lightweight, it made me smile. But on the other hand, it was a little weird to me how all of these emotions surfaced in the span of a day. As a lover of the slowest of slow burns, this love didn’t capture me as it was intended to. I guess I’m kind of a blend of Natasha and Daniel in this case. The ending still made me tear up, so I’ve got to give bonus points.

Overall, The Sun Is Also A Star offers a little something for everyone. It’s a cute book about love, science, some quite important topics, and all the things in between. If we put the rushed romance (I’m aware it was supposed to be this way, but still) this book is quite a good read.

I feel like I really struggled to get into this. All of it was just so detailed. Too detailed perhaps? It felt a little scrappy and busy the whole way through. There was a lot going on, plus I feel like the surrounding characters were a little surplus to requirements. 

Don’t get me wrong – we need a good background in our stories. I loved the history of each character, Natasha and her father in particular. It’s important that we have diversity and a focus on different cultures and ethnic groups within the books we read. I sort of wish there had been more of that – the chance to see how the character evolve over time as their locations, lives and cultures change.

In terms of the story, it just didn’t grab me. I am a big, old cynic. I like my romance to grow slowly and painfully. For me, it just doesn’t happen in one day. 

Personally I’d have liked to see the whole story spread across more than just 24 hours. Because it’s the ending that really got me. There was so much potential there. But it was just a big info dump and I wish there could have been more. More details, more description, more feelings as both characters become adults, because the writing really is beautiful. It’s just wonderful and Yoon is such a talented writer. 

It felt like the bulk of the novel was just a lot of talk and I found it tough to get to know and care about each character. At times it all felt quite cold and awkward, and the chop and change technique of going between characters and filling in bits of history here and there only contributed to this disjointedness.

Having said that though, and also having checked out other people’s reviews, of course these are just MY feelings on the novel. A lot of people fell in love with this book. They adored it and that’s brilliant. Also, I loved Everything, Everything. So I am so looking forward to seeing what she comes up with next!

3 out of 5

A mixed junction of fate, love, desires and teenage dreams!

Wow. I haven't read much lately and due to many factors I find myself leaning on young adult books to overcome this reading slump with lighter reads. Which is kind of odd and even a bit funny, since I almost stopped reading young adult books a long time because I can't find myself enjoying them as much as I did in the past. Nevertheless, I'm still keen of a good story and "The Sun is Also a Star" had all the right ingredients to get my attention. Starting by the author's nationality.
Ever since I started thinking and preparing the project of the World Book Tour (now in partnership with my friends Cata and Jojo ) I started to look out not only for books representing diverse public segments but also different authors, with different experiences and a wider spectrum of analysis. And this book had it all: a Jamaican author, Jamaican characters, Korean characters, and a bit of youthful, confrontation between a magical fate and logic and some scents of the historical paths that brought two different branches of immigration to the United States of America.
It's also a test to life in general, calling the readers to decide where is the line that divides a predisposed destiny and the cadence of small happenings which, in the end, transform who we are and what are our next steps.
Firstly I considered a bit annoying all the parallel stories to which I couldn't find a reason for them to appear constantly, since they interrupted the main plot quite often and line of the story I was designing on my mind. Therefore, I understood near the end their purpose and I could even understand the little magic created from them. It's amazing to conceal how small moments and differences can change someone's life! Nevertheless, they weren't my favourite part of the story for sure.
Natasha and Daniel couldn't be more different from each other. That's why it's so lovely to find them in love, surpassing the inconveniences of family's expectations, emotional baggage, a timeline they can't avoid and their personal insights about how life should be or shouldn't be lived.
 It's a love story, but it's also a bit more than that, fruitfully resulting from the dimensions created by their family stories. In the middle of all the unbelievable situations and actions during that 24 hours, that elements added new memories and moments for both of them to cherish. This book also adds a dimension of real life, when discussing that being a teenage is not always so easy as it seams, since many of the major decisions responsible for defining our future are taken so early.
Because of that, I felt there was a realm of reality claiming to make the readers think about what they are expecting to build on their paths (or what they did in the past) and what it means at the present moment. It's also a lucky charm against blue days, because I doubt that someone isn't going to fall for Daniel, he has that spirituous and free mind we all would like to keep on us (even just a little) every time we see ourselves on the mirror, besides he is a dearest and it's impossible not to smile at his blind faith in the world.
Finally, I enjoyed the last chapter, it felt realistic and honest and as sincere as it could get. Until the author decided to add that small plot twist at the very last. Even if I still understand why she did it, I find it a bit pushed. I just hope her choice was done due the need to create a more enjoyable ending for her readers and not because she thought her readers couldn't handle a bit of factual happenings and life in general. Because every young person conscious about the world knows life isn't perfect and many times isn't fair either. But it always teach us something and leave marks to never be forgotten. If not by memory, at least by heart.

Loved this book, Nicola  Yoon is my favourite author. I can't wait to read what book she comes out with next,

I absolutely loved this book. I loved the story, the coming together of two characters that seemingly are from different backgrounds: Jamaican and Korean but in reality share the experience of being children of immigrants. I loved the chapters of contextualisation interspersed between Natasha and Daniel's points of view. It is tale that feels very relevant in times when people are being uprooted and deported left, right and centre. 
This book is poetic, funny and thought provoking.

Fun, cute, and romantic, Nicola Yoon’s  latest book definitely has the “awww” factor! Its a YA contemporary that will give you the feels and keep you entertained! Ok. So yes there was some istalove going on, and usually I really hate that, but with The Sun Is Also A Star it somehow seemed to work really well. It was unique and touched on some really important issues while still keeping that adorableness that keeps you smiling and turning those pages! 

Full review on my blog...

The Sun Is Also A Star swept me away with its intricacy, and intimacy. Set over the course of a single day in New York City, where a Jamaican illegal resident and a second-generation South Korean poet meet, become friends, fall in love, and fight for a happy ever after.. It's both very sexy, romantic and also honest and practical, and features cultural issues like racial prejudice between on-white groups, and immigration politics. The main characters' - Natasha and Daniel - are also orbited by a cast of others, made up of the people they interact with over the course of the day, leaving the reader with the thought that every action had a ripple, and each ripple can become a wave. A glorious book.

This book took a while to get into. But then it was one I had to continue with and finish. Very original. Very satisfying.

DNF I know this story covers important issues, but I found it way to rambling to make any sense of it. I loved everything, everything and this just didn't live up to it.

Sweet romance with characters to really engage with & some entertaining sub-plots & diversions. Epilogue end a touch cheesy perhaps but it's a good read

This was a very cute, incredibly readable love story, and a massive improvement on Everything Everything. Diversity is clearly important to Yoon, but unlike a lot of recent "diverse books" at no point did this feel like a box ticking exercise. Yoon's characters are incredibly believable as well as being representative. The romance is so skilfully built and not rushed at all, I loved the pacing of this book and was hugely emotionally invested. The butterfly effect side notes were a really original feature and prevented the small scale main plot from becoming dull. Probably the best contemporary YA of 2016, this was a great and incredibly commercial read.

I didn't enjoy this as much as Everything, everything but if I had read it without that prejudice it would have been in my top five books read last year.  Contemporary teenage fiction at its best!