The Fault in Our Stars - John Green

Date Started: 12/2/13
Date Finished: 12/8/13

Wow. Amazing book. I mean this one really lived up to the hype. Serious hype, too, taken from the author's website:

Nice Things That Have Happened

#1 New York Times bestseller
#1 Wall Street Journal bestseller
#9 The Bookseller (UK) bestseller
#1 Indiebound bestseller
New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
Starred reviews from Booklist, SLJ, Publisher’s Weekly, Horn Book, and Kirkus

The Movie Rights

…have been optioned by the nice people at Fox 2000.

Spoilers will be ahead so if you don't want to know, don't click the link to read on!


Alright, this is a book about two teenagers who have cancer so clearly one or both of them are going to die over the course of the book, right? We totally think it's going to be Hazel, our narrator, but then she meets and starts to fall in love with Augustus ("Gus") Waters. I thought the author did a a pretty good job of hiding where he was going with things, at least for a while, but then you get the glimpse of Gus fighting with his parents ahead of the trip to Amsterdam and you just know. In that instant you know he is sick, very, very sick. And so it goes - he uses his wish for he and Hazel to go to Amsterdam to meet their favorite author who wrote an unfinished book that Hazel in particular has been fixated on for years. The author turns out to be a total ass (and a drunk) who tells them nothing that they wanted to know about what happened after the book ended. That part of the trip is disappointing, but the rest, where they fall deeper and deeper in love, is not.

Once back from Amsterdam Gus goes from bad to worse and we see his ultimate demise through Hazel's eyes. It is hard. It is poignant. But the thing that I thought was so right was that one page Gus is there, this living, vibrant character we've each come to picture, and then he is gone. His passing somehow seemed so real and I felt his absence more deeply; perhaps that's because there were so few characters in the book. By the time you lose one, that loss is magnified. The grief, of course, is horrible, but so is hearing Hazel worry about how her parents will go through the same thing when she dies. I can't imagine a child thinking about such things, though no doubt many do on a regular basis. One of the best scenes was when Hazel found out her parents were doing things, essentially in preparation for losing her, to move on with their lives - her mother taking classes to become counselor, for example. Hazel is so happy because she knows their lives won't end with hers, and that was incredibly poignant.

Now, I do have one nit to pick. My only hang-up was this - I couldn't picture any teenager talking the way that Hazel and Gus did. They were just SO adult. No doubt there are kids out there who talk like this (Tavi comes to mind) but I have to feel like they are major exceptions…so with that caveat, this book is incredible and I would 100% recommend. It's not the most uplifting thing you're ever going to read, and I can't imagine wanting to see the movie, but as far as books go, this one was great.

Btw: For more plot info, check out the Wikipedia page, which can be found here.