The Sun is Also a Star
By: Caroline Mcglynn
Tags: Charles Melton, Nicola Yoon, Book Review, Yara Shahidi, The Sun Is Also A Star

The author of The Sun is Also a Star, Nicola Yoon, next to her book (Photo credit PBS books)

The Sun is Also a Star is a National Book Award finalist by Nicola Yoon, a tale about two teenagers, Daniel and Natasha. With very different plans and backgrounds, they meet each other in a record store, and then later in the novel when Daniel saves Natasha from a reckless driver on a street in New York. After the incident, the two become inseparable.

“She’s not paying enough attention to realize that a guy in a white BMW is about to run that red light. But I’m close enough. I yank her backward by her arm. Our feet tangle. We trip over each other and fall onto the sidewalk.”

Daniel and Natasha soon find that everything is connected, the big, the little and the unknown.

Daniel is 17 with dreams of being a poet, but his parents are first-generation Korean immigrants who know how hard it is to be poor. They think that they are looking out for him and guaranteeing him a good future when they tell him that he is going to be a doctor. It doesn’t matter what Daniel wants or how big his dreams are — he must submit to his family’s wishes.

Actress Yara Shahidi and actor Charles Melton who play Natasha and Daniel in the movie. (Photo Credit: Bustle.com)

The other main figure Natasha is 17 and wants to be a data scientist, as she believes in facts and choosing a job based on something that suits her personality instead of what she is passionate about. Natasha is a Jamaican immigrant who knows what it is like to be in a hard place. As her father’s acting career is failing and her mother works many shifts to provide for the entire family, Natasha decides to get a job at McDonald’s over the summer to help her parents’ economic plight. Then her life flips upside down.

After Natasha’s dad plays the protagonist in A Raisin in the Sun, he heads out to celebrate with the other actors at a nearby bar. On his drive home, he gets pulled over for driving under the influence and is questioned by police. In the process, Natasha’s father admits to the officer the secret everyone in her family has been keeping: they were illegal immigrants, all of them except Natasha’s little brother Peter.

Natasha tries her hardest to stop the deportation up until the plane departs. She met with an immigration lawyer in the hope that she could fix everything or at least prolong the deportation so that she could find another way to save her family.

While reading Yoon’s descriptive novel, readers will find themselves attached to the characters and feeling everything that they feel, crying when they cry, and laughing when they laugh. In the 344 page tale, readers can relate to the heartbreak and hope when Daniel and Natasha fall in love and feel like they will be together forever and are then torn apart.

“All day I’ve been thinking that we were meant to be. That all the people and places, all the coincidences were pushing us to be together forever. But maybe that’s not true.”

The purpose of Yoon’s work, also revealed in the novel’s title, The Sun is Also a Star, shows that everything is connected in this large world, and how every person chooses how they live their life because, in the end, nothing is out of one’s hands until it’s in the past.

It is such a bittersweet story, as you watch Natasha and Daniel fall in love, sing karaoke and get to know each other to just see them torn apart by the inevitable deportation. The Sun is Also a Star deserves a five-star review because when you read it you really feel like you are there with Natasha and Daniel and that you don’t ever want to leave. You are put in a new situation, and you forget everything that you are dealing with and all the problems you have. All that matters is Natashas deportation and trying to save her.