The Sun Is Also a Star: Nicola Yoon

‘The Sun is also a star’ is a contemporary young adult fiction by Nicola Yoon. This is my first book by Nicola Yoon although she is known more for her book Everything, Everything. This is a story about Natasha, a high school black girl living in America, who is an unregistered immigrant being deported back to her birth country Jamaica. This is also a story of Daniel who is also a son of a Korean immigrant family who leaves their country to live the American dream and they feel that their son might be able to finally live those dreams even if they hadn’t. This is also a story of Fate, on how the Universe works, sometimes not how we wished it to be, but somehow everything fits in the bigger picture.

Natasha is a practical girl who believes in science and doesn’t believe in fate. She doesn’t think that all of us have a greater purpose and that we all are living as per a great cosmic plan. Contrary to that, Daniel is a romantic at heart who is passionate about writing poems, believes in love, and the idea that two people are meant to be together. I think it is one of the most common themes in most love stories that how the protagonists are so opposite to each other and yet fit well with each other. I don’t know how much that works out in real life but it works really well in fictional worlds.

I love how this book has given this whole optimistic feel even though you won’t say that the protagonists had the exact happy ending they were hoping for. I really liked the writing style of Nicola, especially where she also tells the story from the angle of other supporting characters in the novel like Irene or the lawyer. It just gives us the broader picture of why someone is being rude or polite or a jerk whatever. And I loved the fact how she tied up the story in the end where the whole story was going on to save the life of a supporting character. It just gives the immense relief in knowing that even though things are not happening in our life as we wish it to be, our small actions somewhere might be changing the life of someone we don’t even know about. And this feeling is quite humbling in itself.