Review by New York Times Review
In Yoon's second young adult novel (after the best-selling "Everything, Everything"), true love and physics combine. Daniel is a Korean-American teenager en route to a college interview. Though he dreams of becoming a poet, he feels it's his family duty to go to medical school. Natasha is a Jamaican girl who relies on science, and who's about to be deported. Yoon weaves brief narratives from bit players (an immigration lawyer in love with his paralegal, a just-barely-hanging-on security guard, a grieving drunken driver who almost runs down Natasha) and interstitial entries on topics like "Hair: An African-American History" into the overarching love story between Daniel and Natasha. They meet by chance one morning and find their worlds transformed by the end of the day. "The Sun Is Also a Star" is an enormous undertaking: an eclectic dictionary mashed up with "Romeo and Juliet" and the '90s rom-com "One Fine Day." But Yoon grounds everything in Daniel and Natasha's instant, vital connection (throughout the day they spend together they adorably employ the "36 questions to bring about love") and the conundrum that follows when they realize the universe has brought them together only to part them. It's a deep dive into love and chance and self-determination - and the many ways humans affect one another, often without even knowing it. THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES By Mindy McGinnis 341 pp. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins, $17.99. (Young adult; ages 14 and up) Your heart may still be pounding after you've finished this book. It is uncannily well timed to our current political situation and the outcry over the culture of normalized sexual violence, perfectly calibrated for letting people know what it's like to walk through society as a woman now - worrying about who might be following you, being careful not to drink something that might have been tainted by someone trying to take advantage. Alex Craft is a killer, but not because she wants to be. The animals she tends to at her local animal shelter would agree; so would her friend Peekay (for "Preacher's Kid"), and so would the popular-jock-with-a-heart Jack, the boy who can't help loving her. It's because in a world that has taken away Alex's older sister - who was raped and murdered by a man in their small town who was never convicted - she had to take matters into her own hands. Friendships and relationships ensue as the three head full-throttle into their adult lives. But a threat hangs over everyone. McGinnis, who dedicates her book to "the victims," examines this dichotomy of hope and violence, love and hate, with dexterity and grace. WHAT LIGHT By Jay Asher 251 pp. Razorbill, $18.99. (Young adult; ages 13 and up) Teenagers often lead divided lives. Some split time between parents and towns, or flit in and out of groups, sharing only the parts of themselves presumed to fit in each. For Sierra, a dual existence is a holiday tradition. Each year after Thanksgiving her family leaves their Christmas tree farm in Oregon, hauling trees to a lot in California to sell. For a month, Sierra's home is a trailer on the lot. She's reunited with a childhood friend, and she tries to ignore her flirtatious male co-workers . At the end of December, the family heads home, and the cycle starts anew. Except this year could be the last, for financial reasons. And then there's Caleb, a guy with a violent past whom, despite warnings from those around her, Sierra falls for. Asher's debut, "Thirteen Reasons Why," was a best seller for nearly a decade. "What Light" has been around just as long in concept, and it harks back to a simpler time of young adult storytelling, with its linear first-person narrative (just one!) and classic themes of forgiveness, hope and the power of true love. Even Caleb's violence feels innocent compared with acts of his peers in recent novels. But as with holiday traditions, there's something beautiful about a novel done the old way, particularly when there's enough heart to make you weep. HOLDING UP THE UNIVERSE By Jennifer Niven 391 pp. Knopf, $17.99. (Young adult; ages 13 and up) What happens when a boy who can't recognize faces sees one he can't ignore? What happens when that face belongs to a girl formerly known as "America's Fattest Teen," a girl who had to be cut out of her home when, after her mother's death, she became too fat to leave it? Libby Strout weighs 351 pounds, down from 653. Returning to high school as a junior, she meets Jack, a master at fitting in, who has a secret: He has prosopagnosia, which means that every time he sees a face (including his girlfriend's and his mom's), it's new to him. He uses identifiers like ears that stick out to keep track of whom he's supposed to know. In the wake of a cruel prank, Jack reveals his face blindness to Libby. They end up in school counseling together, slowly connecting. Niven ("All the Bright Places") alternates between Jack's perspective and Libby's, ricocheting forward and backward in time. Whether the pair can be together is the question propelling the book - pretty standard fare, but Niven is adept at creating characters, and at saving the book's sight-and-blindness messaging from being cloying. Libby has survived not only her mother's death but also ridicule that would fell most adults, and her courage and body-positivity make for a joyful reading experience. Jack, a boy who desperately wants to see and finds himself able to do so in ways he didn't expect, provides a worthy counterpart. GIRL MANS UP By M-E Girard 373 pp. HarperTeen/HarperCollins, $17.99. (Young adult; ages 14 and up) "There are four of us dudes sitting here right now, and I kick all of their butts when it comes to video games - and I'm not even a dude," says Pen (for Penelope) Oliveira in Girard's debut novel. Her status as one of the guys means she's expected to help reel in hot girls for her best friend, Colby, an act she justifies because "maybe someday, when I finally man up, one of these girls could end up liking me instead." Pen knows who she is - the problem is other people. "I don't feel wrong inside myself," she explains. But her traditional Portuguese mom and dad criticize her for dressing like a "punk druggie" and lament that she has cut off her long hair. Strangers mock or menace her. Colby and the guys use and abuse her. Only her older brother, Johnny, truly gets her. Then she meets Blake, who is as interested in Pen as Pen is in her, and Olivia, Colby's ex-girlfriend, who listens without judgment and needs Pen's help. In them, Pen finds firmer ground to be herself. Girard's novel is compulsively readable, by turns wrenching and euphoric. Pen is an inspiration to anyone who's struggled to be understood, and a vital addition to the growing world of genderqueer protagonists. RANI PATEL IN FULL EFFECT By Sonia Patel 314 pp. Cinco Puntos, $11.95. (Young adult; ages 14 and up) One evening in 1991, 16-year-old Rani Patel, the only Gujarati Indian teenager on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, catches her father and a "barely out-of-adolescence home wrecker, making out." Her reaction is a gesture of mourning: She shaves off the hair that "flowed down my back like the river Styx." Not only has her father left her mother, he's left the daughter he's sexually abused for years. Rani pours herself into rap, finding heroes like LL Cool J and Queen Latifah, inspirations for her own slam poems. She joins a hip-hop crew, rapping as MC Sutra. The novel is punctuated by her raps, which express "the large and in charge person / I want the world to see." (These lyrics work for her character arc, but also have the effect of making you feel you're reading, well, someone's slam poetry.) Though suffering is at the core of this debut novel, it's also about living through pain by harnessing what brings happiness. And the dip into '90s nostalgia, not to mention the awesome Rani persevering and conquering as MC Sutra - but more important, as herself - makes reading all the slam poetry well worth it. JEN DOLL is the author of "Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest." Her first young adult book, "Unclaimed Baggage," will be published next year.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 13, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* On a summer morning in New York City, Daniel and Natasha wake up as strangers. This is a day that could catapult their lives into entirely new directions that neither of them wants to take. Natasha has only hours left to prevent her family's deportation to Jamaica, after a minor legal infraction jeopardizes their stay in the U.S. Daniel dreads sealing his fate with an alumni interview that will pave his way to a career in medicine, as his Korean family expects. Despite a day packed with Natasha's desperate race against time and a tangled system, and Daniel's difficult tug-of-war between familial pressures and autonomy, love finds a way in, takes hold, and changes them both forever. Yoon's sophomore effort (Everything, Everything, 2015) is carefully plotted and distinctly narrated in Natasha's and Daniel's voices; yet it also allows space for the lives that are swirling around them, from security guards to waitresses to close relatives. It's lyrical and sweeping, full of hope, heartbreak, fate, and free will. It encompasses the cultural specifics of diverse New York City communities and the universal beating of the human heart. Every day like every book begins full of possibility, but this one holds more than others. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Yoon's debut became a best-seller, so the publisher is giving this a strong push that includes a national author tour.--Booth, Heather Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Natasha is 17 and an undocumented immigrant from Jamaica who came to the U.S. as a young child. Her family is to be deported at midnight, but she makes a desperate, last-chance effort to talk to an immigration lawyer in Manhattan. Daniel is a Korean-American whose parents insist he go to Yale and become a doctor even though he loves writing poetry and wants the freedom to figure out his own life path. He is unenthusiastically heading to Manhattan for his Yale interview. When the two meet by chance, they end up having a day full of deep conversations. Turpin and Lee both give award-worthy performances. Both completely inhabit their roles in an absolutely natural and authentic way: we feel that Natasha and Daniel are talking to us directly in their own unique voices, sharing their personal stories, feelings, and frustrations in alternating chapters. Both readers are deft with accents, too, whether it's the Korean accents of Daniel's parents or the Jamaican dialect of Natasha's. The voices of the characters will ring in listeners' minds long after the book is completed. Ages 12-up. A Delacorte hardcover. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Two lives are changed forever when Natasha, an undocumented Jamaican teen seeking legal help on her last day in the country before she and her family are deported, and Daniel, a budding Korean American poet on his way to a Yale admissions interview and a future he doesn't want as a doctor, meet on the bustling streets of New York City. Daniel knows it's fate and sets out to convince the practical and scientific Natasha that they are "meant to be." Over the course of the day, they debate love and destiny, but neither can deny the connection between them, nor that time is not on their side. The superb Printz Honor title is brought to life by dual narrators Bahni Turpin and Raymond Lee, with occasional sections performed by Dominic Hoffman. Turpin and Lee fully express the emotions of the two teens as they fall in love, and they also provide performances for the parents, who play integral roles in the protagonists' lives. This story belongs to Natasha and Daniel, and Turpin and Lee. The narrators do a stellar job of conveying the characters' individual and interwoven journeys. Part coming-of-age, part romance, and all extraordinary. VERDICT Charming and sensitive, an ideal choice for today's teens. ["This wistful love story will be adored by fans of Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park and by those who enjoyed the unique narrative structure of A.S. King's Please Ignore Vera Dietz": SLJ 8/16 review of the Delacorte book.]-Amanda Raklovits, Champaign Public Library, IL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
New York City high school senior Natasha believes in science and rationality. An undocumented immigrant from Jamaica, she and her family are facing immediate deportation thanks to her fathers DUI arrest. Daniel believes in destiny and poetry. Burdened with his Korean-immigrant parents expectations, he is appeasing them by applying to Yale, where he will study to become a doctor. But when Natashas and Daniels paths cross unexpectedly, and repeatedly, over the course of a day, Daniel is convinced: he is experiencing love at second sightthe feeling when you meet someone that youre going to fall in love with them. Soon, its a twelve-hour race against the clock: can Daniel get Natasha to fall in love with him before their time together ends? Can Natasha get the help of an immigration lawyer to stay her deportation? And what will happen if she really does have to leave the country that night? The teens alternating first-person narrations are fresh and compelling, and interspersed throughout are relevant third-person omniscient musings on various histories, from the past and future histories of some of the books secondary characters to the chemical history of love to a quantum theory of multiverses. Fans of Eleanor Park (rev. 5/13) and The Fault in Our Stars (rev. 3/12) are destined to fall for Daniel and Natasha as quickly as they fall for each other. kazia berkley-cramer (c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Natasha and Daniel meet, get existential, and fall in love during 12 intense hours in New York City.Natasha believes in science and facts, things she can quantify. Fact: undocumented immigrants in the U.S., her family is being deported to Jamaica in a matter of hours. Daniels a poet who believes in love, something that cant be explained. Fact: his parents, Korean immigrants, expect him to attend an Ivy League school and become an M.D. When Natasha and Daniel meet, Natashas understandably distractedand doesnt want to be distracted by Daniel. Daniel feels what in Japanese is called koi no yokan, the feeling when you meet someone that youre going to fall in love with them. The narrative alternates between the pair, their first-person accounts punctuated by musings that include compelling character histories. Danielsure theyre meant to beis determined to get Natasha to fall in love with him (using a scientific list). Meanwhile, Natasha desperately attempts to forestall her familys deportation and, despite herself, begins to fall for sweet, disarmingly earnest Daniel. This could be a sappy, saccharine story of love conquering all, but Yoons lush prose chronicles an authentic romance thats also a meditation on family, immigration, and fate. With appeal to cynics and romantics alike, this profound exploration of life and love tempers harsh realities with the beauty of hope in a way that is both deeply moving and satisfying. (Fiction. 14 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
