The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Genre: Fiction/YA Romance

Date of Publication: January 10, 2012

Memorable Quotation: “The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.” (pg. 312)

Lasting Impression: I laughed, I cried, I felt so much love and emotion toward Augustus and Hazel!  When I finished this novel, I needed a moment of silence to revel in the brilliance of the story. This is, by far, John Green at his finest.

Storyline: A

Pace of Story: A

Characters: A++ (Most well-rounded characters I have experienced in a LONG time!)

Ending: A++ (Best ending I have EVER experienced!)

Overall: A++

As most of you may, or may not know, John Green is another of my favorite authors.  I fell in love with his writing when I read Looking for Alaska and continued to love and appreciate his work in The Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns.  However, with The Fault in Our Stars, he really outdid himself. 

The Fault in Our Stars is about two teenage cancer survivors, Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace Lancaster, who first meet at a cancer support group.  Augustus falls for Hazel immediately and with a little time, Hazel allows herself to fall for him too.  I know this sounds like your regular love story because I thought it was just that too when I read the book jacket but once you get into it, you realize it contains so much more.

One of the best things about the story is that these characters are SO relatable. It is almost ridiculous how realistic these characters are and how involved I became in their lives, feeling like a part of their family.  As I continued reading, I loved how Green integrated the message that Cancer is just a disease for these two amazing people, it would not ruin their lives or make them look for pity as they tried live their lives they best they could.

In a novel surrounded by the sadness of terminal illnesses, it is important to have some humor in it, and the conversations Augustus and Hazel had made me laugh aloud multiple times with their rants reminding me of Clerks because of the debates they would have over the most mundane of things. (For example, Why are scrambled eggs locked into being a breakfast food?)

The characters, their interactions, and the pace make this story incredible, but the ending is what really seals the deal. What made this ending so perfect was this rare moment of love that is almost never exposed to the other person because our most secret thoughts about that person can only be revealed after we have gone, and most of the time they are never written down so they are lost when we die. This time, though, those thoughts are written down and when they are read, the person they were written about will know from the bottom of their heart that even if their love on this earth only existed for a short period of time, it did exist, and that’s all that mattered.

This is my favorite kind of book because it goes beyond any genre. I love a novel that makes me feel something, one that makes me feel like I have known these characters all my life, and I felt that and so much more as I was read The Fault in Our Stars. 

These characters accepted their fate more than I could; here I am crying when bad things happened but then one of them would say subtextually, “This is the way it is meant to be, okay?” All I could say was “Okay,” in return.

~Shelly-Beans