Everything Everything & The Sun is Also a Star

Loved these two books! I'm choosing to review them together because they share similar themes, and I reach them back to back in about three days. Such great YA romances. They've been on my shelf for a while, and I finally decided to pick one up as an easy read while I wait for some library holds to come in. 

First, Everything Everything, which I read first, and I am glad I did, because it's my less favorite of the two. Everything Everything (Everything Squared?) centers on Madeline, the girl living in a bubble, allergic to the world. There's a lot in this book that's relatively formulaic for YA romance - two adolescents, love at first sight grows despite significant barriers, lots of witty banter and impressive teenaged vocabulary, a few twists and turns. That being said, I still really enjoyed it. The story is interspersed with little drawings and diagrams, which I thought were super cute and made the book feel a little more original, and helped to balance out some of the heavier themes of what makes life meaningful, and what we do for the sake of love and family. If you loved The Fault in Our Stars (which I did), you'll like (hopefully love!) this book. 

Which of course, I did enough to immediately move onto Yoon's second book, The Sun Is Also A Star, which I loved EVEN MORE than Everything Everything. This books features all new characters, but rather than tackling illness, it tackles immigration and deportation, features two protagonists of color, and is deepened by the alternating perspectives of those characters, rather than just being told from one side of the story. I fell in love with Natasha - her tough demeanor, her taste in music, her rational and scientific view of the world... she's exactly the kind of teen girl I want to read about. Yoon expands her style here, too; in exploring the theme of cause and effect, she includes vignettes from characters that cross the paths of our two main characters, in ways that trace back to our heroes and their journey together. Although there were a few threads that were a bit of a stretch, I was invested enough in the story to buy into these interconnections, however tenuous. Because who hasn't wondered - what if I had turned left instead of right? What if I had answered that phone call, or taken that trip, or whatever the thing is that lead down the alternate path? That's what makes it such a compelling narrative device, albeit one that is easy to abuse or misuse. In this case, I'm a believer, and will from now on look forward to reading just about anything that Yoon publishes. 

Everything Everything, 4/5 stars

The Sun Is Also a Star, 5/5 stars