The Sun Is Also A Star tells the tragic (yes, tragic, because though it is the quintessential hopeless romantic’s novel, Yoon takes her characters through such heartache that it actually hurt to read the words on the pages in some parts) of two teenagers (Daniel and Natasha) in New York City who fall in love in one day and then are ripped apart for the next ten years because one of them is an illegal immigrant whose family gets deported.
It’s the first book I’ve read by Yoon and it will probably be the last; I’m just really not cut out for this teen romance stuff. But, let me be objective. Yoon is a remarkable writer; she gets you to smell the heat rising off the tarmac in Manhattan, and gets you to see the small, clustered space of Natasha’s family living room. Yoon is beyond skilled and is definitely one of those people that you just know was put on this earth to write. Plus, beyond that, the book was very educative; I learned a bit about the astronomical sciences and molecular physics and literature and anthropology from reading it -- which was both artistic and brilliant, to be able to chip in ordinarily complicated stuff in a way that I easily understood. Yoon also addresses other human issues; the plight of the immigrant, the dynamics of interracial relationships, the balance between passion and science, between being a dreamer and a realist, between making your family proud and becoming an individual of your own making.
So, yes, I won’t ever read another Yoon book because now I know she’s a sucker for love stories, but I definitely (okay, more like slightly, because the ending was too obvious) enjoyed the book.
It’s a 5.5 out of 10 from me.