Book cover · ISBN 9780553496680Natasha, a Jamaican teenager, is trying to prevent her family’s deportation. Daniel, a Korean American teenager, is heading toward a future his parents have planned for him. They meet in New York and spend a day arguing about science, poetry, and whether love can arrive so quickly.
The ideas beneath the story
Their different ways of seeing the world make the romance a conversation rather than a simple agreement. Brief shifts toward other lives show how strangers can influence one another without realising it. Immigration and family expectations give their limited time together real stakes.
A question to carry away
How much of a life comes from chance, and how much from what we do with it? The novel holds both ideas together without resolving the tension.
Plot outcome · Ending spoilers
The family’s deportation goes ahead, and Natasha and Daniel’s relationship does not withstand the distance. Years later, a chance reunion on a plane opens the possibility of another beginning.
