All the Way Around the Sun by Xixi Tian
Publisher Summary: Stella Chen’s life ground to a halt when her brother unexpectedly passed away a year ago. Raised together by their grandmother 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 around her brother’s death.
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.
My Thoughts: Even before reading the first chapter, I could tell my emotions were going to be involved throughout this book. The message to readers had me sitting in feelings of nostalgia and reflection on places and people that I miss and long for sometimes. Tian shares that places can make a person and she says “I fear that no one will ever see all of me, because I came from too many places; I lived in too many different worlds.” She also believes that all of us humans are seeking connection and for someone to see us “in our flaws, tragedies, and dreams, and despite these things–to love us.” I happen to agree wholeheartedly and was not disappointed in this beautiful story of connection and identity.
Chapters alternate between Stella’s memories and her present circumstances which was generally easy to follow. Readers will note the change of setting which is often the cue that we are in a different time too. The glimpses of the village where Stella and her brother lived with their grandmother are vibrant and full of love. The bittersweet nostalgia can definitely be felt and the many brief stories help to make readers really care about these characters.
Stella and her family are living their way through their first year without her brother and it’s really not going well at all for any of them. Senior year in a new school would be rough for most people, but in these circumstances it’s pretty brutal. To balance it out we have the reluctant road trip and the estranged childhood friend. That is the portion of the story that is a little more predictable, but with everything else, it was nice to have something that provided some hope and a bit of a breather. It’s not entirely straightforward either–there are still a few unexpected twists and turns. It was also interesting to see the contrast of how Alan and Stella adapted to school in the U.S. after immigrating because there choices led down very different paths.
My Recommendation: Get it as soon as you can particularly if you enjoy emotional stories that explore both romantic and familial relationships. There is a lot of pain in the book, but there is also movement towards healing. The cover art shows a pensive character, but the warm yellows and bit of orange along with the reference to the sun in the title does well to hint at the brighter days coming.
Publisher: Quill Tree Books
Pages: 297
Availability: On shelves September 30, 2025
Review copy: ARC via publisher
Extras:
Instagram Live Event Sunday, September 28 – details here
Interview — Behind the Books Podcast