Even the would-be villains get backstories, and their actions are, if not justified, than at least explained. More than anything, The Sun Is Also a Star is a book about empathy. She also gives us omniscient glimpses into the lives of the people with whom Natasha and Daniel interact, directly or indirectly. Naturally, the book explores ideas of home and immigration, of parents and the generation that follows them, but Yoon also frequently dips out of the narrative to provide brief histories of tangential topics: multiverses, Black hair, the chemical components of love. On this one day their stories overlap, and fate conspires for them to meet before it seems fate will inevitably tear them apart. Nicola Yoon’s exquisite novel takes place over the course of one single day in New York City: it’s the day Daniel has his alumni interview for Yale, a school he’s only applying to in order to gratify his strict Korean parents, and it’s Natasha’s last day in America her family, illegal immigrants from Jamaica, were exposed after her father’s DUI, and now, she must return to a country she barely remembers. The Sun Is Also a Star managed to transport me back to my first love'”or, rather, the first love I wish I could have had'”without veering into the realm of the sappy or the predictable.
The best thing about reading YA fiction as an adult is getting to feel like a teenager again.
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