Book Review: The Fault In Our Stars

I just finished reading The Fault In Our Stars by John Green.  Having read Paper Towns by John Green a few years ago, I was familiar with his writing.  In all honesty, I picked this book up on a whim.  Moving into the new apartment I knew I would be without cable for a few days and this would be a quick and captivating read, which would distract me for just enough time.  However, I didn't plan on liking it as much as I did.  It really does live up to the hype – especially now with the movie coming out.  I made sure to avoid the images and the trailer for the movie because I wanted my own vision of the characters, not based on what has been decided from Hollywood.  However, as soon as I finished – I must admit to Googling “The Fault in Our Stars Movie” and scrolled through the images with pleasure. 

       

Despite being a very emotional person on a daily basis, most books I read do not make me cry; but this one … this one definitely did.  I found myself staying up WAY past my bedtime, with tears streaming down my cheeks and onto my neck, as I kept reading and turning page after page ... until I was finished.  When I finally did finish, I re-read the last page one more time just to make sure there wasn't more to read.  Sadly, there wasn't.

The Plot (which really is this simple): A story of two teens, Hazel Grace and Augustus, with cancer.

While that sounds depressing, it really isn't.  This book is funny, witty and enjoyable, and yes - at times very sad.  Think - Juno meets Cancer. To describe this sentiment, I think this quote from Hazel nails it, “I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn't tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.)”  Not having read many books about teens with cancer myself (i.e., A Walk To Remember), I didn't know what to expect.  Yes, it is a young adult book (with a certain demographic in mind) but this isn't High School Romance stuff.  It is a book about real kids with cancer.  It's about life and death, illness, heroism and how teenagers are supposed to accept the fact that they will die and leave everyone they love behind.  

I think the teen characters in the story are a little precocious and advanced on their intellect and insight about life and death; however what do I know about living with cancer?  Maybe when you're an already angst-y teenager faced with death on a daily basis you have to become a little witty about the cards you've been dealt.

In the end it doesn't matter if I thought Augustus Waters was douche-y with his "i'm-too-cool" attitude because as the reader I cared about the characters.  And despite him coming off as pretentious and so overly charming, in the first few chapters, I'd like to think if I were a terminally ill sixteen-year-old girl and a boy like him from Support Group kept staring at me and told me “ . . . it would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you,” yeah, I’d fall for him, too … hard.  Duh.   

At times it's difficult to read about the characters' circumstances.  For example, when Hazel says things like, "my lungs suck at being lungs" or “I kept telling my lungs to shut up, that they were strong, that they could do this."  However, it is written in such a way that the characters aren't defined by their cancer; yes, it consumes their lives but it doesn't define who they are.  There are a variety of other elements in the story that help the reader understand that Hazel and Augustus are MORE than their illness. They really are just teenagers, who happen to be living with cancer.    

In the end, it's a good book if you're up for an emotional roller-coaster.  It's nothing genius or groundbreaking, but it's an enjoyable read nonetheless. 

Some Quotes: 

“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”  (Augustus) 

“My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because-like all real love stories-it will die with us, as it should." . . . "I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.” (Hazel)