The Sun Is Also a Star

Starred review from September 12, 2016
Is it fate or chance that brings people together? This is the question posed in this impressively multilayered tale of a one-day romance featuring practical Natasha, whose family is facing deportation to Jamaica, and Daniel, a first-generation Korean American with a poet’s sensibility. The teens’ eventful day begins at a New York City record store, where they see someone shoplifting. It’s the first of many significant moments that occur as Natasha desperately seeks aid to stay in America and Daniel prepares for a college interview with a Yale alum. Drawn together, separated, and converging again, both teens recognize with startling clarity that they are falling in love. With a keen eye for detail and a deep understanding of every character she introduces, Yoon (Everything, Everything) weaves an intricate web of threads connecting strangers as she delves into the personal histories of her protagonists, as well as the emotions and conflicts of others who cross their paths. A moving and suspenseful portrayal of a fleeting relationship. Ages 12–up. Agent: Sara Shandler and Joelle Hobeika, Alloy Entertainment.

Natasha and Daniel meet, get existential, and fall in love during 12 intense hours in New York City.Natasha believes in science and facts, things she can quantify. Fact: undocumented immigrants in the U.S., her family is being deported to Jamaica in a matter of hours. Daniel's a poet who believes in love, something that can't be explained. Fact: his parents, Korean immigrants, expect him to attend an Ivy League school and become an M.D. When Natasha and Daniel meet, Natasha's understandably distracted--and doesn't want to be distracted by Daniel. Daniel feels what in Japanese is called koi no yokan, "the feeling when you meet someone that you're going to fall in love with them." The narrative alternates between the pair, their first-person accounts punctuated by musings that include compelling character histories. Daniel--sure they're meant to be--is determined to get Natasha to fall in love with him (using a scientific list). Meanwhile, Natasha desperately attempts to forestall her family's deportation and, despite herself, begins to fall for sweet, disarmingly earnest Daniel. This could be a sappy, saccharine story of love conquering all, but Yoon's lush prose chronicles an authentic romance that's also a meditation on family, immigration, and fate. With appeal to cynics and romantics alike, this profound exploration of life and love tempers harsh realities with the beauty of hope in a way that is both deeply moving and satisfying. (Fiction. 14 & up) COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2016

Gr 8 Up-It is Natasha's last day in New York City, where she has lived for 10 years. Her family, living as undocumented immigrants in a small Brooklyn apartment, are being deported to Jamaica after her father's arrest for drunk driving. Natasha is scouring the city for a chance to stay in the United States legally. She wants the normal teen existence of her peers. Meanwhile, poetic Daniel is on his way to an interview as part of his application process to Yale. He is under great pressure to get in because his parents (who emigrated from South Korea) are adamant that he become a doctor. Events slowly conspire to bring the two leads together. When Daniel and Natasha finally meet, he falls in love immediately and convinces her to join him for the day. They tell their stories in alternating chapters. Additional voices are integrated into the book as characters interact with them. Both relatable and profound, the bittersweet ending conveys a sense of hopefulness that will resonate with teens. VERDICT This wistful love story will be adored by fans of Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park and by those who enjoyed the unique narrative structure of A.S. King's Please Ignore Vera Dietz.-Kristin Anderson, Columbus Metropolitan Library System, OH

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2016
Grades 8-12 *Starred Review* On a summer morning in New York City, Daniel and Natasha wake up as strangers. This is a day that could catapult their lives into entirely new directions that neither of them wants to take. Natasha has only hours left to prevent her family's deportation to Jamaica, after a minor legal infraction jeopardizes their stay in the U.S. Daniel dreads sealing his fate with an alumni interview that will pave his way to a career in medicine, as his Korean family expects. Despite a day packed with Natasha's desperate race against time and a tangled system, and Daniel's difficult tug-of-war between familial pressures and autonomy, love finds a way in, takes hold, and changes them both forever. Yoon's sophomore effort (Everything, Everything, 2015) is carefully plotted and distinctly narrated in Natasha's and Daniel's voices; yet it also allows space for the lives that are swirling around them, from security guards to waitresses to close relatives. It's lyrical and sweeping, full of hope, heartbreak, fate, and free will. It encompasses the cultural specifics of diverse New York City communities and the universal beating of the human heart. Every daylike every bookbegins full of possibility, but this one holds more than others. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Yoon's debut became a best-seller, so the publisher is giving this a strong push that includes a national author tour.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

Starred review from December 5, 2016
Natasha is 17 and an undocumented immigrant from Jamaica who came to the U.S. as a young child. Her family is to be deported at midnight, but she makes a desperate, last-chance effort to talk to an immigration lawyer in Manhattan. Daniel is a Korean-American whose parents insist he go to Yale and become a doctor even though he loves writing poetry and wants the freedom to figure out his own life path. He is unenthusiastically heading to Manhattan for his Yale interview. When the two meet by chance, they end up having a day full of deep conversations. Turpin and Lee both give award-worthy performances. Both completely inhabit their roles in an absolutely natural and authentic way: we feel that Natasha and Daniel are talking to us directly in their own unique voices, sharing their personal stories, feelings, and frustrations in alternating chapters. Both readers are deft with accents, too, whether it’s the Korean accents of Daniel’s parents or the Jamaican dialect of Natasha’s. The voices of the characters will ring in listeners’ minds long after the book is completed. Ages 12–up. A Delacorte hardcover.

January 1, 2017
Natasha, an undocumented immigrant from Jamaica facing immediate deportation, believes in science and rationality. Daniel, burdened with his Korean-immigrant parents' expectations, believes in destiny and poetry. When their paths cross unexpectedly, and repeatedly, over one day, Daniel is convinced he's going to fall in love. In a twelve-hour race against the clock, the teens' alternating first-person narratives are fresh and compelling.

(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

Starred review from November 1, 2016
New York City high school senior Natasha believes in science and rationality. An undocumented immigrant from Jamaica, she and her family are facing immediate deportation thanks to her father's DUI arrest. Daniel believes in destiny and poetry. Burdened with his Korean-immigrant parents' expectations, he is appeasing them by applying to Yale, where he will study to become a doctor. But when Natasha's and Daniel's paths cross unexpectedly, and repeatedly, over the course of a day, Daniel is convinced: he is experiencing love at second sightthe feeling when you meet someone that you're going to fall in love with them. Soon, it's a twelve-hour race against the clock: can Daniel get Natasha to fall in love with him before their time together ends? Can Natasha get the help of an immigration lawyer to stay her deportation? And what will happen if she really does have to leave the country that night? The teens' alternating first-person narrations are fresh and compelling, and interspersed throughout are relevant third-person omniscient musings on various histories, from the past and future histories of some of the book's secondary characters to the chemical history of love to a quantum theory of multiverses. Fans of Eleanor & Park (rev. 5/13) and The Fault in Our Stars (rev. 3/12) are destined to fall for Daniel and Natasha as quickly as they fall for each other. kazia berkley-cramer

(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

November 1, 2016
New York City high school senior Natasha believes in science and rationality. An undocumented immigrant from Jamaica, she and her family are facing immediate deportation thanks to her father's DUI arrest. Daniel believes in destiny and poetry. Burdened with his Korean-immigrant parents' expectations, he is appeasing them by applying to Yale, where he will study to become a doctor. But when Natasha's and Daniel's paths cross unexpectedly, and repeatedly, over the course of a day, Daniel is convinced: he is experiencing love at second sightthe feeling when you meet someone that you're going to fall in love with them. Soon, it's a twelve-hour race against the clock: can Daniel get Natasha to fall in love with him before their time together ends? Can Natasha get the help of an immigration lawyer to stay her deportation? And what will happen if she really does have to leave the country that night? The teens' alternating first-person narrations are fresh and compelling, and interspersed throughout are relevant third-person omniscient musings on various histories, from the past and future histories of some of the book's secondary characters to the chemical history of love to a quantum theory of multiverses. Fans of Eleanor & Park (rev. 5/13) and The Fault in Our Stars (rev. 3/12) are destined to fall for Daniel and Natasha as quickly as they fall for each other. kazia berkley-cramer

(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

Starred review from September 1, 2016
Natasha and Daniel meet, get existential, and fall in love during 12 intense hours in New York City.Natasha believes in science and facts, things she can quantify. Fact: undocumented immigrants in the U.S., her family is being deported to Jamaica in a matter of hours. Daniel's a poet who believes in love, something that can't be explained. Fact: his parents, Korean immigrants, expect him to attend an Ivy League school and become an M.D. When Natasha and Daniel meet, Natasha's understandably distracted--and doesn't want to be distracted by Daniel. Daniel feels what in Japanese is called koi no yokan, "the feeling when you meet someone that you're going to fall in love with them." The narrative alternates between the pair, their first-person accounts punctuated by musings that include compelling character histories. Daniel--sure they're meant to be--is determined to get Natasha to fall in love with him (using a scientific list). Meanwhile, Natasha desperately attempts to forestall her family's deportation and, despite herself, begins to fall for sweet, disarmingly earnest Daniel. This could be a sappy, saccharine story of love conquering all, but Yoon's lush prose chronicles an authentic romance that's also a meditation on family, immigration, and fate. With appeal to cynics and romantics alike, this profound exploration of life and love tempers harsh realities with the beauty of hope in a way that is both deeply moving and satisfying. (Fiction. 14 & up)

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.