⇒“The universe stops and waits for us.” -The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon ⇐
Author: Nicola Yoon
(4.08 stars – Goodreads rating)
Genre: Fiction / YA / Romance
Format: Hardcover
Publication Date: November 1, 2016, by Delacorte Press (Hardcover)
Pages: 384 (Hardcover)
#TheSunIsAlsoAStar #NicolaYoon
Maybe part of falling in love with someone else is also falling in love with yourself.
Romance. Yuck! OK, now that I got that out of my system, I LOVED this book. How is that even possible? How is it that a sardonic old cynic like myself can go gaga over a book that is entirely about two kids falling head over heels in love with each other? The answer is simpler than you think, but let’s read the book blurb together first…
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?
No obstacles in the way, please. No one needs to get bruised up falling in love. I just want to fall the way everybody else gets to.
The Sun is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon is a book that I originally included in my March Movie Madness challenge. I wanted to read the book then watch the movie and compare the two.
Then, in only a matter of days, the world changed.
With all the upheaval from jobs and schools, I was more than a little distracted. Instead of having more reading time, I actually find that I now have less. Instead, I am spending most of my time entertaining an 11 year old girl who is substituting me for all of her very talkative friends.
OK, so I didn’t finish this book during my March challenge, but I still really wanted to read it and watch the movie (the movie is still pending). I really surprised myself with how much I actually liked to read about these two people finding each other in such a random – or not? – way.
We’re meant to walk through this world together. I see it in her eyes. We are meant to be.
So how did Nicola Yoon manage to tug at my heart strings with this entirely cute book? Like I said before, the answer is easy: she included a character with whom I identify. Natasha isn’t a starry-eyed romantic. She believes in science and rules and facts. She doesn’t have a use for love or romance and, amazingly, she finds both. Yes, Natasha is a fictional character, but doggone it, I like to think that if her heart can be turned from the “darkside”, then there is hope for the rest of us!
The poetic heart is not to be trusted with long-term decision-making.
Give me a book like this any day – short chapters that let you travel through the story at breakneck speed or as leisurely as you’d like. And each chapter another insight into who these people are that we’re following all over NYC. I loved getting to know their families, those other motivations for the people that want to have some influence over them. Those other opinions and actions definitely make a difference to our main character and to the outcome of their stories.
In the end, this is more than a love story. It’s a story about fate and circumstance, about timing and how the decisions that others make have lasting effects on our own lives, time and time again. There is probability, there is chance, and there is a certain science behind the chemistry between two people and the possibility that they will be together forever. One can always hope.
The Sun is Also a Star Book Playlist:
- Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit (1st trip to USCIS bldg / Natasha)
- Bob Dylan – Blowin’ in the Wind (Daniel at home)
- Bob Marley – No Woman, No Cry (Natasha at home)
- Temple of the Dog – Hunger Strike (Record Store)
- Pearl Jam – Yellow Ledbetter (Coffee shop)
- Abba – Take a Chance on Me (Norebang karaoke / Daniel)
- Soundgarden – Fell on Black Days (Norebang karaoke / Natasha)
Nicola Yoon
Nicola Yoon grew up in Jamaica and Brooklyn and lives in Los Angeles with her family. She’s also a hopeless romantic who firmly believes that you van fall in love in an instant and that it can last forever. -Bio adapted from book cover
