I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Stella Chen’s life ground to a halt when her brother unexpectedly passed away a year ago. Raised together by their grandmother for years in the Chinese countryside before rejoining their parents in the United States, his absence destroys the connective tissue in her family. With another jarring move her senior year, from rural Illinois to unfamiliar surroundings in San Diego, she is left alone and adrift in her family’s suffocating silence and the void of unanswered questions her brother left behind.

So when Stella’s parents force her to join her estranged childhood friend Alan Zhao for a college tour all over California, Stella dreads it. Alan is a reminder of everything Stella wishes she could be—popular, gregarious, unburdened—and a reminder of how lost she is.

As this road trip takes Stella and Alan down beautiful coastlines and through fraught family dynamics, Stella can’t help but feel the spark of why she and Alan were once so close. Before long, they find themselves pulled into each other’s orbits, forcing unspoken feelings and long-hidden truths into the light.

Short and Sweet Review

All the Way Around the Sun, follows our main character Stella as she navigates what her future will look like and also grieving. When Stella’s brother went off to college everyone expected him to come back but he doesn’t he passes and his death changes everything. Stella and her brother were raised in the Chinese Countryside by their grandmother until they came to the US to be with their parents. Stella grew up in Illinois but now it’s her senior year and she’s now in San Diego. When Stella’s parents have to go to China they leave Stella behind with childhood friend Alan so they can go visit different colleges.

A big theme in this book is that Stella doesn’t really know who she is, she’s moved around to different places, she was always in her brothers shadow and now she just doesn’t know. It also doesn’t help that her family is grieving but they around talking about her brother and they haven’t even told her grandmother that he’s gone. We see Stella struggle with her grief but she doesn’t have anyone to talk to about it and she’s someone who keeps everything in until she eventually blows. Stella is left in California as her parents believe this is the perfect opportunity for her to visit colleges and figure out what she’s going to do after high school and the deadlines are coming up. Alan and Stella used to be friends but something happened and they haven’t talked since. There’s some initially tension between the two but eventually we see that they do like each other. I did like following them on their road trip and seeing some of the different antics they get into. I will say my biggest problem with this book was Stella. I just could not relate or connect to her and sometimes I found her reasons to be upset with people to be ridiculous like she was making a mountain out of a molehill. There are some chapters where it has flashbacks that show her memories with her brother and I find those to be the best part of Stella.

Overall, this was a beautiful book and I liked the premise, I just don’t think it was for me. I would recommend this book to someone who is interested in seeing a character go through grieving and also finding themselves and healing in the process.