ALL THE WAY AROUND THE SUN, by XiXi Tian, Quill Tree Books, Sept. 30, 2025, Hardcover, $19.99 (young adult)
A teen and her former friend are forced to face their pasts and futures during a college tour road trip in All the Way Around the Sun, by XiXi Tian.
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. —Synopsis provided by Quill Tree Books
All the Way Around the Sun explores familial bonds, friendship and grief.
The story unfolds from Stella’s first-person point of view alternating between the present and remembering the past. Having been raised by her grandmother, Stella’s never had the same relationship with her parents.
Stella’s bright, but she’s never been smart on the same level as her brother. Now that he’s gone, all her parent’s hope and energy is focused on her alone. But she’s not her brother, and she’s afraid to go to school and suffer the same fate. She feels lost.
Alan is also Chinese. His father is strict. And Alan understands how hard it was to assimilate into the American culture, in part, because of Stella. But that’s also how their friendship fell apart. Now, they’re stuck driving to colleges around California, and they’re going to have to face their past, whether they want to or not.
Author XiXi Tian’s text is fluid and compelling. She gives nothing away, allowing the reader to work through things with Stella. Of particular interest is her study of Chinese diaspora. It speaks to readers on micro and macro levels that resonate. I also appreciated her approach to grief as individuals and within a family unit.
All the Way Around the Sun is a thoughtful YA novel with touches of romance and a lot of reflection.
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