“We are trying to fit a lifetime in a day”
“The Sun Is Also A Star” by Nicola Yoon is a Goodreads Winner of Best Young Adult Fiction. It follows a one day timeline of the lives of Natasha, a physics and data science enthusiast, who is trying to save her family from deportation to Jamaica in the next 24 hours and the life of Daniel who is forced by his Korean family to become a doctor. A series of events and choices makes them bump into each other. “The Sun Is Also a Star” is a remarkable book which will keep you absorbed towards the end with its intense peek into the lives of immigrant families.
Natasha has lost all hope until she’s referenced by an Immigration officer to Jeremy Martinez, a lawyer who could possibly help her family from getting deported. At the same time, Daniel is making his way to an interview which would help him get into Yale to become a doctor, though he wants to be a poet. First both of them encounter Natasha’s ex boyfriend shoplifting music CDs from a store and later Daniel saves Natasha from a car accident and as a result they end up meeting each other. The style of writing is amazing as each chapter switches between Daniel and Natasha, and sometimes between their families and history. Within this short time frame both of them are together and fall in love. This book is about love, universe, heartbreaks, hope and lost hope, immigration, and of complex cultures and races. Towards the end there are some surprises which were quite unexpected and that’s one major highlight of this book and kept me hooked.
One thing I liked about this book was how it talks about choices, and small events which could possibly alter the entire course of some totally different person who is not even remotely associated with that choice. If the BMW driver hadn’t driven fast, Natasha wouldn’t have tripped and Daniel wouldn’t have been there to save her. They’d not have been together for that entire day, and Daniel would’ve never got the courage to look his mean brother Charlie in the eye (and hit him too). Natasha talks about the universe and dark matter, whereas Daniel talks about unrealistic poetry. It’s amazing to see how they both end up making sense of each other’s likings.
