Book Review: The Sun Is Also A Star

“America’s not really a melting pot. It’s more like one of those divided metal plates with separate sections for starch, meat, and veggies,” seventeen-year-old Natasha reflects on her last day in the United States. Having lived in New York for almost a decade as undocumented migrants, her family’s time has run out: they’re about to be deported back to Jamaica. And it’s all her father’s fault.

Daniel is an aspiring poet from a Korean family with the day off school to attend a Yale admissions interview. When his path intersects with Natasha’s quest to find a lawyer that can help her family stay in the country, he falls slightly-creepily in love with her and decides to use a scientifically-proven method (asking certain questions and then staring into each other’s eyes for four minutes) to get it all to work. It’s an irritating contrivance that the book doesn’t need; the intensity of the situation slowly builds into a believable attraction between the two of them.

More interesting than the romance is the universe around these two teenagers and the flickers of connection between individuals that spark changes for good and bad that day. Kindness from a stranger has the power to alter the course of a life. An accident prompts an affair, which in turn causes difficulties for the protagonists. Natasha and Daniel’s chapters are interspersed with omniscient vignettes that offer up a wider view of things, and although these are sometimes a little too information-heavy (there are sections not just on family history but on the cultural politics of black hair and Korean-owned businesses) they make the novel much more than a whirlwind love story.

Despite the sometimes-too-philosophical dialogue (you know the sort – the John Green Teen) it’s a compelling read, and Natasha in particular is a relatable protagonist. The epilogue is also most pleasing indeed. The Sun Is Also A Star was a National Book Award finalist and follows another dual-perspective YA romance, Everything Everything.