T-minus 6 DAYS until the 2018-2019 school year is underway!
Barnes & Noble does, and that’s all the really matters.
I’ve been quite busy organizing, collaborating with my co-teachers, and “researching” YA books to recommend to my students. The Sun is Also a Star is one such book, and also the last book on my reading challenge list for August (the September Challenge will be posted this weekend; get your books ready)!
Jaded, brainy girl? Check. Hopeless romantic boy? Check. Unrequited love? Check. This is basically the perfect teen romance and one that will be especially popular when the movie version comes out May 19, 2019.
Before that happens, you need to read the book first, duh.
The Sun is Also a Star movie leads; Yara Sharhidi as Natasha &
Charles Melton as Daniel Bae. Dreamyyy.
The plot centers around Natasha Kingsley and Daniel Bae, who serendipitously meet in a music store and spans the length of a day as they explore New York City together and test the whims of fate. Natasha comes from a Jamaican family who are at the precipice of deportation due to some bad decisions made by her father. When she meets Daniel, she’s on a mission to save her family from having to return to their native country. Daniel is the son of South Korean immigrants who want nothing more than for both of their sons to attend prestigious colleges, become doctors and pursue the American dream (or at least their version of it) to the fullest extent. Daniel’s own passions involve creating beautiful poetry and living the life of a starving artist.
Upon meeting Natasha and falling immediately in love, Daniel wants to prove to Natasha, who is painfully practical and scientific, that he can make her fall in love with him in one day by following his fool-proof, soul connecting system. Ever skeptical, Natasha accepts his challenge, all the while knowing she won’t see Daniel after this day if her attempts to avoid deportation fail.
Through out the book, they encounter people and situations that cause a Butterfly Effect; every situation and individual play a role in their future. Along the way, Yoon shares the perspectives of these people and how they came to cross paths with Natasha and Daniel and how their own encounters alter their lives’ path.
Will this young love have a chance to mature? Or is this romance as fleeting as so many teen passions?
This book was heart-meltingly romantic, and a little bit tragic. Two young people, falling into hopeless knee-weakening love with the looming doom of reality striking at any given moment to rip them apart? #crying
It’s like a modern Romeo & Juliet…but with less dying.
Along with that, how Yoon describes the minute effects every action and reaction can have on how our lives play out is so vital to the telling of this romance. If Daniel hadn’t chosen to traipse around New York instead of prepping for his Yale interview, would he have ever met Natasha? If Natasha hadn’t been held up at the security gate by a lonely security guard, would she have ever met Daniel? If they had both come from more supportive, less damaged families, would they have even sought the company of one another?
It’s a story set in a cosmic framework, that explores the possibility of multiple universes, in which anything and everything is possible.
It will leave you wondering about your own life’s course and how there are so many paths we could pursue or avoid. It only takes one choice, encounter or action.
And I especially loved the ending…
If this sounds like your kind of romance, you can get it here:
Another YA romance by Yoon can be found here:
Another adorable teen romance I highly recommend can be found here:
Leave a comment for how you enjoyed these reads 🙂
Happy & healthy reading!
Alexis
