I like Evie’s character, she’s not super distinctive but still entertaining and relatable. I relate to Evie on a personal level, because I used to feel that way about love. It feels like looking back on my past self. Now I just try my best to live in the present and live by “don’t be sad that it’s over, be happy that it happened.” Just because something isn’t permanent doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. At the same time I’m not completely past my Evie stage, since I also tend to take for granted my relationships with people and sometimes wish I had appreciated them and my life in the moment more. To put it in the book’s terms I wish I had said yes to more things, and I’m still trying to improve and go with the flow a little more.

Also I liked the bit of people watching we got (reminds me of the song lol) when she starts seeing random strangers kissing. I wish there was a bit more of that, getting to see see these side characters' stories even when they're not all that relevant to the main plot line was one of the main things I liked about The Sun is Also a Star.
 
At one point she describes X as “starting to look edible” which made me die laughing. It’s one of those romance book things that you either love or hate. It’s also a pretty self aware book. Evie likes to read romance books herself, so she points out tropes and things that many readers (including myself) have noticed about them. A few times it also feels like you have an inside joke with the book, and I love dramatic irony, so that was fun.

About the actual relationship: Dislike (a tiny bit exaggerated but still reasonable) to love, opposites attract and learn from each other, banter is pretty good. Also I liked the friend group, which isn’t always the case. Another trope I like in contemporary books is texting, especially friends group chats because I always end up sending pictures of those pages to my friends captioned “this is literally what we’re like.” The characters are a little tropey but they’ve got more dimensions than just one archetypal personality.

I’ll admit, at the end I kept thinking “is this the ending? Is this the ending?” But once we got there it was oh so good. To be honest I was a bit iffy in the beginning of the book, but I trust Yoon’s ability to develop the story, and it definitely paid off. I’d say most of the book was 4, maybe even 3.5 stars, but the last 50ish pages were a solid 5 stars. Nicola always manages to shine a light on life and love and make you feel all the feelings while doing it. Yes, it did made me cry. 

I still liked The Sun is Also a Star better because the couple and side plots were just more my thing, but both are really great books. It has some similar characteristics but not so many that it felt like copy paste with different character names. Mostly just stuff that’s part of the writing style. Also Instructions for Dancing felt more mature than the other book, the characters were older and it was also just a more mature perspective on love and life. I really like seeing Nicola Yoon evolve and I can’t wait to read what she writes next.