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?
Rating 3/5 Stars
"Natasha doesn’t say what she suspects. That meant to be doesn’t have to mean forever."
I keep feeling torn with Nicola Yoon’s books. Her writing is engaging and somewhat poetic, the ideas behind the stories are meaningful and the characters easily relatable. However, the romance in these books is always too much and that’s no exception with The Sun is Also a Star. It creates a grand contrast, you have the realistic and engaging story on one side, and the ultra-sugar-sweet-coated insta-love on the other.
The story has Natasha, an illegal immigrant that is being deported that same day, and Daniel an American-Korean boy that has to live up to his family’s expectations of greatness. There are also short chapters with point of views of random characters with stories of loss, desperation and heartbreak, which I really enjoyed.
“The trouble with getting your hopes too far up is: it's a long way down.”
Before I began reading The Sun is Also a Star, I had come across a few reviews that mentioned how the characters fall in love in just one day. Now, that got me REAL skeptical. I’m not a big fan of insta-love, let alone some undying forever and meant to be thing that happens in a few hours. Nevertheless I was willing to put my reservations aside and don’t go all cynical on it right away. After all, maybe the story would do something good with it? Maybe it wasn’t real love what they meant, but more of a connection?
If anybody reading this was wondering how the romantic aspect of this novel works I can tell you this: it doesn’t.
Daniel comes across Natasha on his way to his Yale interview. He’s looking for a sign, something to tell him he should just ditch the college nonsense and pursue his dreams of being a poet, and for some highly convoluted reason he fixates himself on Natasha.
I thought that maybe I had to get used to it. That the more I read, the more this couple would make sense the less the romance would bug me but that wasn’t the case for me. I never believed they loved each other, I never thought they were meant to be; I just got used to their perfectness being shoved down my throat and at one point or another stopped rolling my eyes (it doesn’t count if I did it internally) but I truly have no idea of why these two characters connected or had said they loved each other (and meant it) in less than 7 hours.
If nything, I found the love aspect the least interesting aspect in this book. Other than a love story, The Sun is Also a Star could work much better as a narration of people’s dreams and how the dumbest things can destroy them; learn to move on, adapt and change.
I loved seeing Natasha’s parent’s story, how they grew to dislike one another and grew apart because of their conflictive dreams. Irene’s and the security guard were great stories too.
If the book had been about that I would give it 4/5 stars easily enough.
The love at first sight thing didn’t work also because the characters had more important things going on, and sometimes the romance overtook everything.
Take Daniel, for instance. He could have good potential, yet the reason over why he suddenly decides that Natasha is THE ONE and stalks her on his absolute belief that they are meant to be was simply… not here. Dude came off as creepy, and it was a shame because he had something truly worth exploring with his family but his entire thoughts were NatashaNatashaNatasha so he came off rather underdeveloped.
There were some really good stories here, but the romance was not believable and that was the MAIN plot of this book. If you’re not a fan of insta-love, you probably won’t enjoy this.
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