A review by vader
The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“There’s a Japanese phrase that I like: koi no yokan. It doesn’t mean love at first sight. It’s closer to love at second sight. It’s the feeling when you meet someone that you’re going to fall in love with them. Maybe you don’t love them right away, but it’s inevitable that you will.”

I've been going through a “contemporary romance phase” and there is absolutely nobody but Nicola Yoon to blame. She's bewitched me with the enthralling characterization of her protagonists, swept me off my feet with her florid yet realistic prose, and ripped my heart off my chest with the twists and turns of her plot.

Before you write me off as overdramatic –please give me a chance to explain.

“We have big, beautiful brains. We invent things that fly. Fly. We write poetry. You probably hate poetry, but it’s hard to argue with ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate’ in terms of sheer beauty. We are capable of big lives. A big history. Why settle? Why choose the practical thing, the mundane thing? We are born to dream and make the things we dream about.”

Natasha and Daniel are no strangers to disappointment. It has turned her into a sort of cynic-realist, and him into a romantic, a dreamer. Needless to say, their world views oppose each other, something that’s worsened by Natasha’s imminent deportation to Jamaica.

While she’s on her way to speak with a lawyer on her immigration case, she runs into Daniel. They strike a conversation, which evolves into a dare: he bets that they will fall in love by the end of the day, while Natasha argues that love doesn’t exist, and that this is, thus, impossible.

“I don't believe in love."
"It's not a religion," he says. "It exists whether you believe in it or not.”

They proceed to spend the whole day together, making their best to (not) fall in love. Most of it is spent getting to know each other, asking questions that are personal but not just too personal, comparing their lives as an undocumented Jamaican immigrant and a second-generation Korean-American.

“I think all the good parts of us are connected on some level. The part that shares the last double chocolate chip cookie or donates to charity or gives a dollar to a street musician or becomes a candy striper or cries at Apple commercials or says I love you or I forgive you. I think that's God. God is the connection of the very best parts of us.”

All the while, their attraction –only a set of chemicals released by the brain, nothing mystical or poetic about it according to Natasha- only grows. It looks like the Universe is making its best to put them together, if only to separate them at the last possible minute.

Their personalities, their whole realities and worlds are completely different and yet they have so many things in common, all of it makes nothing but bring them closer in their attempt to understand the other, all the while leaving a huge impact on the people around them.

“I love this part of getting to know someone. How every new piece of information, every new expression, seems magical. I can't imagine this becoming old and boring. I can't imagine not wanting to hear what she has to say.”

By the end of the day, it’s impossible for them to think of Natasha without Daniel, of Daniel without Natasha, but just because they would like it that way doesn’t mean fate will have it. Human selfishness, that of our families, our friends, or the people we met once on the street will have it different.

However, none of it erases what has already happened. Nothing can change the past, even if our future tries its best to pretend it never happened.

“I kiss him to get him to stop talking. If he keeps talking I will love him, and I don't want to love him. I really don't. As strategies go, it's not my finest. Kissing is just another way of talking except without the words.”

The people who we meet for only a day can have a huge impact in our lives. Whether it leads us to believe in love, or to defy the expectations that others have on us and set out to do the thing love, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes, it’s not about how long you’ve known someone, but how you know them. The way in which you come to understand them, and the way they change us. What we would’ve thought to be fact one second turns to dust in another. An impossible choice becomes the obvious one.

We can be changed –we can change people in a matter of hours, minutes, seconds, and we might not even realize we’re doing it.

“People just want to believe. Otherwise they would have to admit that life is just a random series of good and bad things that happen until one day you die.”

I’m usually a cynic, a little bit like Natasha in that respect. I don’t believe in love at first sight. I don’t believe that small actions can have huge consequences, but only for a little while Nicola Yoon convinced me that all of that and more is possible, and yet didn’t sugarcoat the truth, not even once.

The Sun Is Also a Star is a ray of sunshine through the clouds during a rainy day. It’s for romantics, and for realists that want to believe in love just once, for a few hours. A book that will not fail to give the hopeless a little bit of hope.

“When they say the heart wants what it wants, they’re talking about the poetic heart—the heart of love songs and soliloquies, the one that can break as if it were just-formed glass. They’re not talking about the real heart, the one that only needs healthy foods and aerobic exercise. But the poetic heart is not to be trusted. It is fickle and will lead you astray. It will tell you that all you need is love and dreams. It will say nothing about food and water and shelter and money. It will tell you that this person, the one in front of you, the one who caught your eye for whatever reason, is the One. And he is. And she is.”