Book Review: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Hardcover, First Edition, 318 pages

Published January 10th 2012 by Dutton Juvenile

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 12, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs... for now. 

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault. 

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

MY THOUGHTS: (my currently UNSTABLE thoughts)

    I’m thinking of some genius sentence/phrase to write that would perhaps try to wrap up what this book is, how it is, and what i made me go through. Okay. I simply can’t. So I’m just going to write what comes up. (pardon my incoherence, that’s what the book made me.)

    John Green, I realized, is one of those authors who belong to the Kings & Queens monarchy in the writers/authors field. SERIOUSLY. I don’t know how they (those authors) do it, but this is where my belief in “there are things you are born to do, and born with gifts” is applicable. The novel is just purely AWESOME and EPIC. I have used those words too many times already I’m afraid it has lost it’s value, but there’s just no other way of saying awesome, because it just is. AFter reading novels such as this, I feel like my whole literacy is notched one step up. My vocabulary is expanded and my brain had been added 1% more knowledge, that’s why I don’t regret EVER reading novels like this.

    The Fault in Our Stars by John Green has sensitive topic (cancer) and he made it look like an icing on a cake. What I mean is, though we’re breaching a precarious subject, but he managed to make me laugh A LOT with his lyrically sarcastic and witty conversations and narrations. The story is basically about Hazel and Augustus, two kids who suffered from Cancer and is still in the middle of the in-between (meaning: i’m not sure if my cancer will recur or if how long i’ll still live), who fall in love, and this..is their life. And this. is. really. not. a. Cancer. book. (well, maybe it is, depending on how you view it).

    I love the intelligent and zany conversations between Hazel and Augustus all throughout the novel. Augustus, from the first word he uttered, I already fell in love with him. His this positive, OVERLY positive guy, who’s just funny and ludicrous, and he is someone I would like to spend my life with (sappy, I know, but true. haha). Hazel, on the other hand, is someone who I’d like to be. She’s smart and in my opinion, (most of the time) she says the right things, and it just makes me envy her because I’m not like that. (then again this is fiction, but still,haha).

    The roller coaster of emotions I’ve suffered in reading this book is insanely crazy. You’d think i’m idiotic. I bawled and sobbed, and cried incessantly non-stop from pages 200 plus plus , but soon I stopped (honestly, I only stopped because my sister called me and we had a family meeting, and when she saw me she’s like “what’s wrong with you? why’s your nose red?--yes, that much crying,it’s ridiculous!). Suffice to say, if I my attention wasn’t called, I didn’t stop. crying. I just couldn’t! The words in the book were interwoven with each other beautifully and the words made my eyes turn into a waterfall! It doesn’t add up to the fact that my father died with cancer, so I, more or less, know what the REAL feeling is about.

    I’ve quoted. I’ve highlighted it. I cried. I laughed. I was envious. I was engaged. i was...I was... In the end, I want to read that “An Imperial Affliction”.

   To everyone: YOU MUST READ THIS. It will change YOUR LIFE. (or probably won’t). I still don’t know what it did to me, but it certainly did something. Warning though: this book is not for the faint-hearted and the skeptics.

JUST. BRAVO. Seriously, one of the best books I’ve read. EVER.

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