Books at the Box Office: The Sun is Also A Star

I discovered Nicola Yoon when The Sun Is Also a Star was a Book of the Month club pick wow…back in December 2016. I remember reading it at home over vacation and absolutely flying through it. Then, I read her book Everything, Everything, and now both of them have been adapted to film! Her husband, David, has also published a book: Frankly in Love, that was also a BOTM YA pick. Insane, right? Anyway, while her books don’t really linger with you for life, they’re good reads in the moment and I loved the little science aspects incorporated into both of them and the movie was a cute YA contemp that gave me FEELZ in the trailer and on the big screen.

From Amazon:

Natasha: I’m a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Not destiny. Or dreams that will never come true. I’m definitely not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a crowded New York City street and falls in love with him. Not when my family is twelve hours away from being deported to Jamaica. Falling in love with him won’t be my story.

Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, the good student, living up to my parents’ high expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. But when I see her, I forget about all that. Something about Natasha makes me think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store—for both of us.

The Universe: Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true?

Looking at it now, the book won a lot more awards than I remembered! It’s great, a cute little romance with some real world implications and the ending made me SOB. I kind of hate that the movie changes that a bit, but I feel like the movie had such charisma…anyway. The book is cute. I remember FLYING through it, and I love finding little Yale tie-ins in books, so that got me too! It made me want to read Everything, Everything immediately, so it must have really spoken to me at the time.

Now, onto the movie

The movie stars Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton in the lead roles, and I remember seeing this trailer and thinking these children are too pretty to a) be teens b) grace my screen together. The sheer shine of their cheekbones is traumatizing, almost, but wow. Also, I know Yara is younger than me, and that also freaks me out. But I digress. The movie’s good though! YA Romance is so charismatic on stage, and I loved how they incorporated New York and the city and time into the shooting of this film. The ending, as I mentioned before, does change a bit, but ultimately, it still captures the feeling of the end, though I didn’t cry quite as hard.  If you like rom-coms with heart and representation of people often not represented in rom-coms, and cheekbones, and cute karaoke scenes (OMG!!) this is the movie for you .