Hey Now Books! The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Title: The Fault in Our Stars
Author: John Green
Format: ebook 198 pgs
Rating: 5/5 Hey Nows
When I was first recommended anything by John Green I sort of shrugged it off. There’s a lot of authors that are hyped about and never fully meet the accolades for which they are spoken of so highly, when people talk others are convinced before they even try something; therefore I wasn’t sure if Mr. Green and I would be a good mix because of his cult status in the bibliophile and general nerd community (He’s popular ‘cause of his nerdfighter videos over on You Tube.) Needless to say I was wrong and I’m glad that I was wrong because his writing lives up to all of the kind words I’ve heard/read about him over the years.
I don’t weep for fictional characters, I might get a little misty eyed every once in a while (I’m not a robot! Emotions are hard!) but I never start bawling like a baby, but I did, I bawled so hard. I’ll talk about that in a second, first the summary!
The beginning of TFiOS sounds hopeful. Hazel Grace Lancaster, our narrater and soon to be best friend has cancer, she has been fighting it since she was a kid. When we meet Hazel she’s in a support group for children with cancer, some of the kids are NEC (No Evidence of Cancer) and others are on their way up to the big guy in the sky. She gets a lot of flack from her mother because she’d rather spend her days at home watching America’s Next Top Model than go out and have friends. See, Hazel knows she is buying time with a miracle drug that stalls the cancer, she is still terminal and doesn’t have much time although she doesn’t know how long it is. At Support Group Hazel meets an amputee and cancer survivor named Augustus Waters. Augustus is smart, witty and carefree. (The carefree part being something someone like Hazel, who is a bit more grounded in reality doesn’t understand in the beginning.) The two form an instant connection. Through Augustus, Hazel learns how to live and realizes that she isn’t battling Cancer she is battling herself, because as Augustus puts it, Cancer is something that is a part of you.
When Augustus and Hazel start there friendship you almost feel bad for Hazel because she worries about Augustus having to live without her when she’s gone. The story builds up our hopes in the beginning because you can’t help but smile that someone like Hazel, who carries around an oxygen tank and is constantly fearful that the current day might be her last is finally living her life. But then tragedy happens, something you may have seen coming because lets face it, it’s a trope, but you don’t want it to happen and when it does everything inside of you begins to crumble. The walls you might have built suddenly shatter, and you might find yourself like me, a bumbling mess lying in the pool of her own tears and sadness.
Through the emotions there is a light, TFiOS teaches us that diseases can rip us away from our lives, take away those that we love in an instant, but we can’t be mad at disease, because as it says in the book “cancer is just trying to live.” We have to make it apart of us, because it is apart of us and thats the only way we can live with it without entirely hating ourselves.
It’s a difficult book to get through if you’ve lost someone, or know someone you love with cancer. (I have and I do.) I found it to be therapeutic because everyone needs a good cry every once in a while and why not weep for those that you have become so close to in such a short period of time, people who don’t really exist but feel like they’ve been your best friends since infancy. That’s what happened to me with Hazel and Augustus, they became part of me and I them, thats the sign of a good book. Hours later I was in bed on Christmas Eve thinking about the book and the message it carried and I almost started to cry again.
I could feel like a loser for revealing that I had a good cry over fictional characters, but I cried because I fell in love with Hazel and Augustus and that’s all that matters in a good book, the love for the people you read about. A lot of times authors hate the characters they write and you could see it through their writing, but not John Green, he loved those two kids, the girl with the pixie cut and the boy with the crooked smile and he made them shine and they shined so bright we saw and loved them too.
Favorite Quotes:
“You gave me forever with numbered days."
"That’s the thing about pain.” Augustus said and glanced back at me. “It demands to be felt."
"You look like a millennial Natalie Portman. Like V for Vendetta Natalie Portman."
"Really?” he asked. “Pixie-haired gorgeous girl dislikes authority and can’t help but fall for a boy she knows is trouble. It’s your autobiography as far as I can tell."
"I am going to read this terrible book with the boring title that does not contain storm troopers."
