The Fault in Our Stars

This book is so beautifully written with incredible depth of emotion. It gracefully captures the fragility of love and the complexity of being human.

The best stories are about memory.The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is quite possibly the best standalone novel I have ever read and is certainly the most phenomenal book I’ve had the privilege to experience in the year 2013. It is my third favorite story and favorite non-fantasy novel. The title comes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and it sets the perfect tone for this story written in the first person by Hazel, a sixteen year old girl in the regressive stage of lung cancer who nevertheless is required to cart around an oxygen tank because (as she so perfectly puts it) her “lungs suck at being lungs.” Her mother forces her to go to a cancer patient/survivor group where she proceeds to exercise her considerable teenage snark and wit along with her friend Isaac who is suffering from a type of cancer that eventually requires the removal of an eye.One day Hazel catches the attention of a boy named Augustus and their romance is as breathtaking and expedient as it is completely genuine and uncontrived. Augustus has recovered from bone cancer that left him with a prosthetic leg, but did nothing to diminish his spirit. She can scarcely believe he’s as perfect as he projects and indeed feels as though she’s found his hamartia or fatal flaw when he puts a cigarette in his mouth. Hazel is of course livid that anyone who survived cancer would willingly place themselves into its way again, but Augustus never lights them using the act as a metaphor of having “the killing thing right between your teeth, but you not giving it the power to do its killing.”Both of them together have enough wit and snark to drown the world in metaphors and sarcasm with just the barest dash of bitterness for their plight. Hazel whom Augustus calls “Hazel Grace” for most of the novel feels incredibly guilty that she’s allowed Augustus to fall for her as she and her family expect her cancer to return full force at any moment, and yet their relationship parallels the ever moving train of her mortality. So much so that Hazel shares with him that her favorite book is a story by the reclusive author Peter Van Houten called An Imperial Affliction.“My favorite book, by a wide margin, was An Imperial Affliction, but I didn’t like to tell people about it. Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising that affections feels like a betrayal.”Van Houten’s work is very meta to the larger story at hand being about a girl named Anna who suffers from cancer and her one-eyed mother who grows tulips. But Hazel makes it very clear that this is not a cancer book in the same way that The Fault in Our Stars is not a cancer book. Anna grows progressively sicker and her mother falls in love with a Dutch Tulip Man who has a great deal of money and exotic ideas about how to treat Anna’s cancer, but just when the DTM and Anna’s mom are about to possibly get married and Anna is about to start a new treatment, the book ends right in the middle of a-Exactly.This drives Hazel and eventually Augustus up the wall to not know what happened to everyone from Anna’s hamster Sisyphus to Anna herself. Hazel assumes that Anna became too sick to continue writing (the assumption being that her story was first person just as Hazel’s is), but for Van Houten to not have finished it seems like the ultimate literary betrayal.As terrified as Hazel was to share this joy with Augustus (and god knows I understand that feeling) it was the best thing she could’ve done because they now share the obsession and the insistence that the characters deserve an ending.The conversations of Hazel and Augustus are not typical teenage conversations, but they’re not typical teenagers. Mortality flavors all of their discussions and leads to elegance such as“The tales of our exploits will survive as long as the human voice itself. And even after that, when the robots recall the human absurdities of sacrifice and compassion, they will remember us.”They speak of memory and calculate how there are fourteen dead people for everyone alive and realize that remembering fourteen people isn’t that difficult. We could all do that if we tried that way no one has to be forgotten. But will we then fight over who we are allowed to remember? Or will the fourteen just be added to those we can never forget? They read each other the poetry of T.S Eliot, the haunting lines of Prufrock,“We have lingered in the chambers of the seaBy sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brownTil human voices wake us, and we drown.”And as Augustus reads Hazel her favorite book she“…fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”The quotes from this story are among the most poignant and beautiful I have ever seen.“Gri...

I apologize for the lengthiness of this review. There was just so much I had to say concerning this book.The one that rips your emotions apart. The Fault In Our Stars. Many of you have probably heard of this book, and are anticipating the movie. I know I am. I’ve been wanting to watch the movie because I love Shailene Woodley. But since it comes out next week, that means I had to read the book beforehand. (Yes, I’m one of those people that has to read a book before the movie comes out.) That meant embracing something I’ve been putting off for so long. So what did I put off for so long? This is a story about a girl named Hazel Grace who has terminal cancer. She attends support group for cancer, but it just makes her roll her eyes. One night at a normal meeting, she meets a beautiful boy named Augustus Waters. Afterwards, they rewrite each other’s stories.So I’m going to be brutally honest here. I was afraid to read The Fault In Our Stars. I have read so many reviews of this book, and mostly people just talk about how much they cried. And not just cried, but ugly snot dripping out of your nose mixing with your tears cried. I’m afraid of books like this. I guess I’m afraid to get emotionally involved in a book because its going to open up my own personal wounds and emotions, no matter what the subject matter is of the book. But there was another reason why I was afraid to read this book. When it comes to tough topics, like cancer for this book, I am afraid of over cheeziness. I don’t know why, but I despise books where a character goes through a tough journey and the author spits out bits of “inspirational” sentences that are created solely to make a person feel some sort of emotion. I have never found inspiration in these types of books or sentences, and this is probably the fact that I have been overexposed to these kinds of things, and i’m kinda sick of them. I’ve seen many people quote these kinds of books, thinking they are beautiful and true, but never once have I seen people follow these guidelines to life. These are sentences like “He found that he was struggling on his journey but he knew that love would take him where he needs to go, free his soul, if only he could just allow himself…blah blah blah” I’m not trying to take anyones thunder away. If you find solace in these kinds of passages, then by all means, please ignore me. My discrimination against these types of passages is a personal one.But what I loved about this book was that it stripped a lot of these passages apart. Don’t get me wrong, there were some beautiful passages in this book, but it wasn’t the same old inspirational passages that are sometimes found in books about tough topics. What I always found difficult in books about tough topics, was that their struggle became who they were. I always questioned what happened after these characters overcame their obstacles, and I always imagined that they fell apart because their journey was so ingrained in who they were, that there was nothing left after it was over. But thats not what happens in this book. These characters aren’t their sicknesses. I felt endless possibilities for these characters after the book was over, and I was okay with that.I believe that this is a book that you will either love or you will be bored with it and hate it. I’ve heard both sides of the argument. And thats perfectly understandable. Some people aren’t moved by this type of story. I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t as emotional as I thought I would be. There were a few times that I thought I would cry (and believe me, it takes A LOT for me to cry because of a book. And so the fact that it even got me a little close to crying is a very special feat, in my opinion) I know there were people that were balling their eyes out over this. I never felt like this was a book that was written just to make me cry. I believe thats left to the books that become overly cheesy, as was discussed earlier. I just think that there were topics that were inevitable in this book, I mean the topic of the book is cancer and love. Some would argue that those two ingredients are a recipe for disaster. And because I knew that these topics were a part of the book, I wasn’t as emotional as I thought I would be. Now, thats not to say that I didn’t think the book did its job. I think my emotions were completely normal.I really don’t want to discuss the plot line here, because I don’t want to reveal anything. I had my assumptions about what would happen in this book, but I was wrong. I don’t think it was a plot twist or anything, but rather I was just wrong to assume. If you are going to read this book, which I believe many of you are, then I want you to take in what happens to the plot as you read it, and not from some assumptive view from someone whose already read it. I want you to enjoy it as I did.As for the characters. These characters aren’t extraordinary except for the fact that they have/had cancer. And I think thats fantastic. I didn...

Why do any of us ever stop reading Young Adult (YA) novels? When my 13-year old daughter made me promise to read The Fault in Our Stars, I shrugged, agreed, and threw it on the pile with all the other books I have promised to read, knowing it would be a while given that my have to list numbers in the double dozens. She kept after me though, and her relentlessness paid off. The Fault in our Stars by John Green, a lovely piece of literature, posing as a YA novel and named Time’s Best Fiction book of 2012 (where’ve I been?), is loaded with rich and fertile subject matter akin to great literary works. Yet while epic life and death themes wax and wane throughout, TFioS retains all those things sacred to teens like swaggy dialogue and biting wit along with the occasional teen tantrum. Result? Texture and comedic relief temper the grand emotions sweeping through this book like so many divergent currents. Hazel Grace Lancaster is dying. She’s been the cancer kid for a few years now, always on the verge of checking out since her lungs seem uninterested in doing the single job to which they have been assigned: providing air to the rest of her body. In Hazel’s world, everyone she meets suffers from some Herculean illness so her life seems not so bad, considering. At a Support Group meeting in the Literal Heart of Jesus (you’ll see), she meets hunky Augustus Waters and his friend Isaac. Augustus has a touch of cancer himself, but is currently NEC (no evidence of cancer). One thing leads to another and then, badda-bing, badda-bang, Hazel and Augustus are hanging out. I can’t say dating because Hazel holds back, knowing she’s going to die soon, and not wanting to bring anyone else down with her; she’s already suffering tremendously over the fact that her pit crew -- mom and dad -- will be out of a parenting job once Hazel’s checked out. Augustus, clever, hot Augustus doesn’t take no for an answer and wins Hazel over with a variety of his many charms and abilities, the most important being making contact with Hazel’s favorite author, Peter Van Houten, who wrote her favorite novel, An Imperial Affliction. Hazel’s own life seems inextricably interwoven with AIA and she is determined to find out the fate of the characters after the heroine dies, leaving the book in mid-sentence, and the rest of the characters to an unwritten fate. Hazel has written to Van Houten repeatedly, practically begging for answers. Knowing may help disentangle some of her tightly strung parts, or maybe she just wants to know for the sake of knowing. But Van Houten’s not talking until Augustus emails Van Houten’s assistant and receives a response. Perhaps because of his touch of cancer, Augustus is one of those rare teens who asks the hard questions such as what does oblivion feel like and how can I avoid it? He realizes what so many of us go to great lengths to avoid -- the knowledge that all life is loss, since even the most fabulous ones end in death and oblivion, so get used to it. The pair travel to Amsterdam using Augustus’s long-unused “wish” (despite his view that “life is not a wish-granting factory”) to meet Van Houten who turns out to be a prick of the highest caliber. It all works out in the end if you consider death a method of working it out. The book is sad, but never mopey and triumphant in a, “yes, oblivion is still waiting around the corner, but deal with it,” kind of way, which is okay, because what I hear Green saying is that even in death there are tremendous amounts of life at stake. Books like TFioS hold the key to the silly, unnerving, unrelenting and magnificent universe without even knowing it, reminding me how I felt as a kid: idealistic and invincible with all the answers. Reading it will bring back all those important, self-aware notions you thought you’d left behind years ago, and give you a fresh clear lens with which to look at them. Oh, and it will help you not forget to be awesome.

I loved this book more than not. I am planning for a career in Pediatric Oncology as a Research Nurse and this book was a fabulous insight into the children who face this horrible disease.This is my honest review.This book is depressing, but in an optimistic light. Optimistic because larger than life concepts are discussed here; this is not a teenager worried over being "cool". This is a teenager who is facing life with a disease numbering her days. She has grasped what she has in this lifetime. Her perspectives are blunt, philosophical, and sadly relevant.Her vocabulary is huge. This is where I was not so excited- I enjoy learning new words reading. When a sentence is FULL of huge, not commonly used words though, it's a bit overwhelming to understand what's going on. I'm thankful for instantly being able to look up words on Kindle. I usually gather from context and root words what a word means, but when the whole sentence is full of new ones, gathering from context isn't so easy.One would suppose perhaps that most teens do not speak on these levels of intellect and vocab, but I can recall quite a few conversations from my junior high and high school years (over 10 years ago) in these same circle of words and thoughts. One must also consider that these teens would gravitate toward those places due to their being terminal as well.The one thing I really did not like more than the vocab, was the incessant run-on thoughts and sentences. While it did bring personality to the characters and sometimes even my own thought processes, writing endlessly like it drove me crazy. It's only difficult because it isn't what we are used to reading. It was a unique perspective though.The plot is beautiful. It truly is. Amidst the inevitable deaths coming, these teens face their lives and juice every drop they're able to. They made me reflect on my own; am I really taking for granted my health? I have known children personally who have lost their fights to Cancer. This book is extremely personal to me.I also can relate in one more aspect: the not being able to breathe one. I am an otherwise healthy individual, but rely heavily on my daily inhaler for Asthma. If I do not take it, I certainly feel it. At the beginning diagnosis, I was tested for allergies but had none. I was getting Bronchitis more than 3 times a year which is a hallmark sign of conditions like COPD and a terminal one called Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency. Every time I watched someone light up a cigarette, I wanted to punch them. Here I am, longing to run without having an asthma attack every time... wanting to walk up stairs without pain and passing out... I hated my lungs. I still do. No matter how strong I try to make them, they refuse to function without a faithful 440mg of meds per day. The ending diagnosis was not a chemical fallout at all, but more so an anatomical imperfection.The ostea in my nose are too small so when the barometric pressure in the air shifts, this creates even more pressure in everyone's sinuses. Since mine cannot properly drain, I get a lot of backup or it's a residual, slow dripping that I don't know is happening. I never get a runny nose. I carry a constant cough and rattle in my lungs, but without the inhaler, the cough grows drastically and almost immediately I am at my body's mercy.Before ruling out the above two diseases, I was terrified. I was 24 years old- I still had life to live... I WANTED to live and put everything I had into every day I had. I had a new relationship that I was pretty confident in (and that 2 and a half years I married). I had to prepare myself for potentially "terminal" news. Alpha-1 is generally a 5-10 year life span after diagnosis, COPD being a variance. Mind you, I am not a smoker nor have I ever been. I've always been athletic and food-conscious. I was looking at my life differently. If I had Alpha-1, it meant a slow digression of my lungs and injections to suffice my body. I would deteriorate beneath myself and be dead within 10 years most likely. Endless treatments... loosing my life... I began looking at the bigger picture. Why am I here? Is what I'm already aiming to reach, what I'm supposed to be aiming for? What legacy would I leave? Would I ever be a Mama? A wife?I could not imagine facing death at any younger of an age, let alone like these characters do. I truly believe this book is not for the faint of heart, but for those who are open-minded and easy to relate to.

The Fault in our Stars is a love story of two cancer struck teenagers. The author, John Green, tells this story through the eyes and mind of the main character, Hazel Grace. John Green got inspiration for the title of the book from Act 1 Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” The genre of “The Fault in our Stars” is realistic fiction and geared towards young adults but enjoyed by many ages. It was recently turned into a movie with the same name filmed by Josh Boone. TFIOS is the winner of the 2013 Children’s Choice Teen Book award. It was named TIME magazines #1 Fiction Book of the year on June 6th, 2014, a feature film adaption that was released and earned over $300 million in box office sales. Also, TFIOS won many Teen Choice Awards in 2014. The Fault in our Stars was a book that let me wanting more. I wanted to know more about the book after the ending. I wanted to know what happened with Hazel’s family. The book was well-written and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just wish it was a more strung out plot. Moreover, on Amazon book reviews surviver_15 said “I think it is very well written. It covers a topic that is difficult to talk about and is often avoided” While scrolling through all the reviews I see several topics having their titles be, “The Best Book I’ve Read in Years”, or “Young Adult Fiction at its Finest.” In addition, on Amazon book review Helen said, “TFIOS is a word that defies its genre in all the best ways. The silly boy crushes and superficial gossip that writers think makes up 99% of high school steps aside for a beautiful, honest, heartrending story of life, death, and love. I can only compare this book to Markus Zuzak’s award-winning “The Book Thief” in terms of sophistication and depth.” Coming from one of our own Trumbull High School fellow classmates, Lily Clark also states, “This book was inspiring and heartwarming. It taught me to love my life and not take anything for granted.” In my opinion, the trip to meet Van Houten was the best part of the book. John Green described Amsterdam in a way where I could imagine the romantic dinner at the restaurant Oranjee and the canal ridden streets. The detail in which they described the suffering of Augustus Waters throughout the book was articulate and gave me an elaborate mental visualization of him. It was almost as if I could hear their voices in my head and I could feel their sadness. Looking at all these quotes from people I can definitely tell they agreed on how they felt about this book. So let’s talk about what this book is really about. TFIOS is a love story about two stage 4 cancer teenagers. Hazel Grace is a shy thyroid cancer stuck 16 year old girl. When her mom makes her go to a support group, she takes special interest in a 17 year old ex-basketball star who happens to be an amputee. Hazel recommends Gus to read, “An Imperical Affliction” which becomes the epitome of their relationship. After finishing the book, Gus reveals that he had been in touch with the author of the book and had been offered a meeting with him. After medical restriction problems and parent persuasion, they took a trip with Hazels mother to Amsterdam to meet the infamous Van Houten. After meeting with the drunken genius, Hazel loses interest in finding out “What happens next.” In this book on this romance filled trip, Gus tells Hazel his cancer has returned and he was in fact dying. When they return home Gus’s sickness worsens rapidly. Now I don’t want to give too much away but let’s just say you get that feeling of not wanting to put the book down, but also need a break from reading this heartwarming book. Most importantly, you can’t be afraid to let a few tears go. On the website theguardian.com Milo agrees by saying, “It enthralls, entertains, and educates and offers a jumping off point for young people to explore and discuss important philosophical issues. And yes, I did get something in my eye at the end. But it was only dust.’” The author did a great job of allowing us to feel different emotion throughout the book. At times it was hard to read, but I guess that’s what you should expect when reading at times romantic and funny, but at the sad time heart wrenching and heart breaking. John Green receives a question asking, “Did the themes and ideas from stories you had abandoned in the past help shape TFIOS?” He replied, “Yes , in a lot of ways. There are many lines from the sequel and the desert island book that ended up in TFIOS in different ways. John Green also adds, The desert island book was primarily about how we behave around each other when we are scared, how fear makes us both more and less human…..But then I ended up including a lot of metrification in TFIOS, so it founds its way in as well.” Concluding, if you have read some of his other book for instance, Paper Towns (2008), Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010), as well as some short stories “Reasons”...

While not usually one for young adult books, I read John Green's The Fault in our Stars along with my 14-year-old for a summer read. The book has been getting a lot of press (and it is now a movie), and having lost my 6-year-old to cancer 14 months ago, I'm a bit attuned to cancer-related books. However, there are so many bad books out there, I was worried this would trivialize a clearly non-trivial topic.While everyone's experience with cancer is different, Green gets it. Sure, I could argue details and teens with cancer will surely find issues to challenge, but this is believable. What struck me was how much he gets how cancer impacts a community, and especially a family. While the two teenagers, Hazel Grace and Augustus, are the ones dealing with life and death issues of cancer, we also see how their parents and friends handle it. Or don't. Toward the end of the book we hear about all these people showing support on Facebook, but it is clear they have been absent from the daily lives of these teenagers and their families.As a result, and because of newly shared interests, the cancer community creates its own world. For nearly three years our family was part of that community at a Children's Hospital, and when we lost our son, we lost that community. The rest of the world, frankly, just does not get it. Green sees this alienation, sees how families respond, and respects that new world.The title is great, as it a play on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar where Cassius says to Brutus, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings." Green is saying is that the lives of Hazel Grace and Augustus have been created by outside forces. However, they take that "fault" and refuse to let the cancer rule their life. Their trip to Amsterdam is a slap in the face of the victim mentality they could assume.Most telling is when Augustus identifies himself with his cancer. "What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They're made of me as surely as my brain and my heart are made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predetermined winner." This reminded me of the time my oldest son was asking my youngest son with cancer, Oliver, about what kind of robot he would be if he could be a robot. As they talked about the traits, my oldest said, of course, that Oliver's robot would not have cancer. "Yes it would," said Oliver. "The cancer is part of who I am." In other words, cancer patients begin to live with, and not against, this horrible disease.The book also captures the experience of grief, and I don't think of giving away too much to say that in a book about cancer, there is grief. Hazel Grace describes it as when you are in pain and they ask you to rate it from one to ten. She never said ten. "I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring a the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned."That is harsh. That is true. And that is why this book is worth reading, whether or not cancer has entered your life. You get a real sense of what it is to live with cancer as a patient and a family. And the cancer community loses people all the time, so they get grief.If any part of the book could be changed, it is a sexual encounter between two teens that could have been avoided. It adds nothing to a connection that is already there, and does not send the best message to teenagers (call me a prude, but there are other options in life).As a parent who has lost a child, the book had me early on, when Hazel Grace (who narrates the book) says: "There is only one thing in this world s***tier than biting it from cancer when you're sixteen, and that's have a kid who bites it from cancer."Not my words, but my feelings.

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If today's book doesn't make you cry, you can't convince me you have a soul. This show will be spoiler free.The Fault In Our Stars, or TFiOS as it's affectionately known by its loyal fan base, tells the story of Hazel Grace, a teenager with terminal cancer. In the first chapter she meets Augustus, whose own cancer is in remission.Hazel requires constant oxygen because, as she says, "Her lungs suck at being lungs," while Augustus lost his leg in his fight to conquer the disease.The two of them immediately feel a magnetic attraction and swiftly fall in love, sharing discussions about life and philosophy, literature, art, and the nature of infinity.In particular they become obsessed with An Imperial Affliction, a novel about a teenage cancer victim by the mysterious Peter Van Houten, who long ago retired to the Netherlands.In an act of supreme cruelty, or brilliance, depending on who you ask, Van Houten didn't really end his novel, interrupting it mid sentence on the last page to indicate that the main character passed away.It's a bold statement about the nature of death and how it isn't all wrapped up in the end, which Hazel and Augustus can sympathize with.While that's very very deep and meaningful and Hazel and Augustus completely understand the message, Hazel has been obsessed with finding out what happened to the other characters after the novel's last page.After some unsatisfying correspondence with Van Houten, they decide to seek him out in the Netherlands to seek their answers.This story carried deeper significance to me than merely two star-crossed lovers brought together by their maladies. My father is a cancer survivor twice, and I lost my mother to breast cancer three years ago. So with that in mind, this book had moments that were difficult to get through.But as someone with personal experience, I can say that the depiction of cancer victims in TFiOS is excellently done. Cancer changes everything about your life except for the fact that, like the rest of us, you still have to live it.It's actually incorrect of us to describe people as cancer victims, because those are two words that do not define them. They are people who have cancer. People comes first.They are just like the rest of us in that they have hopes and dreams and fears and faults, and they just also happen to have this incredibly terrible disease.Like any major life experience, cancer shapes the way that Hazel and Gus see the world, but it doesn't define them as people. They are who they are for the same reasons as the rest of us--the way and place they were raised, the things they've seen and done, and the thoughts they've had about life.This is summed up best by their relationship. Hazel is not in love with Augustus because he, like her, has cancer. She falls in love with him because he is beautiful, inside and out, and their personalities mesh in a way she's never experienced before. His cancer has nothing to do with it, other than the fact that it's something they can both relate to.In the story, their illness does double time as a plot device. For the average American teenager, a spur-of-the-moment romantic trip to the Netherlands simply isn't feasible, but Hazel and Augustus are able to do it because of an organization similar to the "Make a Wish" foundation.In this way, John Green provided a believable solution to a problem that would otherwise require some sort of eye-rolling deus ex machina moment.I'd like to take a brief moment to discuss the dialogue in the story. In my review of Divergent I complained about how the teenagers would randomly spout philosophy incongruent with their general dialogue.In TFiOS, Hazel and Augustus are veritable philosophical machines, but it works because their disease has turned their attention inward, and they've become analytical about life, death, the universe and everything.A note on writing style: this was my first John Green book, and as I flipped through the editorial reviews in the beginning, there was a comment from E. Lockhart stating, and I quote, "John Green is one of the best writers alive." And I was like, "Psssh. Yeah. Okay."After reading the book, he might not be wrong.I debated my rating on this book because five stars means I would recommend it to anyone without question, but due to its emotional content I wondered if I would actually do that, considering how many of us have lost people to this disease.But in the end, it was just too good. I give The Fault in Our Stars five stars out of five.No book that I'VE read in the last decade has had this much of an emotional impact on me or done so much to communicate the reality of the terminally ill.The nature of my five-minute book reviews means I can't possibly do it justice within this video, so in summary I can only say that this book is important to all of us, not just those who are suffering from canc...

This book was an unexpected––but very definite––life changer. I'm in my mid-twenties, and wouldn't have otherwise picked up this book, but I had an obligation to do so, and I'm very glad I heeded it.Given that it's been almost two years since I read it, and its effects are still as vibrant today as they ever were - I can confidently attest that this book stands the test of time. Shortly after reading it, I wrote a little diary entry about my experience, which fairly-adequately conveys the emotions I experienced..."It was late. It was a fairly warm evening for a January in Utah, dry, and still. The darkness outside was the kind you could almost smell. It was calm, silent, and the stars were so visible, it was almost as if the moon was calling for backup in order to light the city below.I was on the couch nearest the front window in my living room, and I had been there for about 7 hours that day – getting up only to eat and go to the bathroom, and when I ate, I brought the food right back onto the couch so I could continue to read. It had been such a long time since I was able to get so engrossed in a book. Let alone a fictional book, primarily geared toward an adolescent audience.And yet here I was, devouring page after page. I had a goal in mind, a bigger purpose for reading the book, otherwise I wouldn’t have spent all day reading it, let alone would I have justified breaking my 3-year-long “fast” from reading fiction. But as I read the last few chapters, the goal didn’t matter anymore. I was emotional. I was full of insights and perspective. And most of all, I was anxious to finish the book so I could go and speak with my wife.As I teared up, reading the last few lines of the book, I got up and began to look for my wife. She had been playing the drums for the better half of the day, and working on a video that she would be publishing the following morning. But almost by magic, she walked into the front room just as I decided to go looking for her.She saw the look in my eyes, and knew I needed her presence and full attention. I looked deeply into her eyes and gently placed my hand on her cheek. I could tell she was uncomfortable just enough at first, having been working on her video, it was a bit of an adjustment to pull herself completely into the moment. But it didn’t matter to me. Not then.I poured my heart to her, as tears streamed down my face. “I love you, Mari. It is such a privilege that I get to love you. How lucky am I that I get that opportunity?”As I expressed my heart’s intent openly, she began to open up. I’m intimately familiar with that look in her eyes, where her pupils begin to widen, her deep, dark brown retinas begin to blend with the shade of her pupils, and they glow. It’s a sweet feeling, swimming in a little sea of infinity. As the author John Green put it, "some infinities are bigger than others." And this moment was our little infinity, stretching out beyond space and time, a connection that could not be penetrated by fear or shadows, or distracted by noise and excitement. This was love, and it was melting us in the moment. It felt like our ceremony on our wedding day, but so much more simple. This was raw authenticity, immersed in the honor and privilege of having the opportunity to love one another."I can't give all of the credit to the book, because I proactively created such a deep, integrated experience facilitated by the emotion the book inspired. But the feeling has never faded. Every day, I am thankful for the privilege of getting to love my wife. Whether she’s being a complete joy to be around, as we explore and experiment and create great things together and converse late into the night, or if she’s frustrating me, doubting herself and questioning her worth, letting her anger for the hurt in the world get the best of her – I just feel damn lucky and privileged to get to love her.I highly recommend you get this book, immerse yourself in it, and make manifest whatever emotions it may ignite within you.

Only two chapters into this book, I knew I was going to be in trouble. I never should have picked it up. I never should have started reading. The problem is that I cannot be unbiased towards this work or its contents. Much like the author John Green, I too am a writer with several novels on the market. Unlike John, my books have not been successful. My foolish assumption was that the sincerity of the work is a direct indicator of the success of a project. Apparently that has never been true. My naivete is to blame here. What I have awkwardly discovered is the sales of a book are relative to the size of audience that the celebrity has an emotional bond with. If the writer in question is not a celebrity, there may never be an audience to follow. Why did I pick up this title? Perhaps I was hoping that if I read one of John's books and found him to be an outstanding writer then I would be happy about his success, elated that he is getting his just rewards. Yet with every page I was rolling my eyes and sagging my head. The Fault in our Stars is a love story between teenagers who have been dealt a bad hand but it is a hand that comes with “Cancer Perks” as John put it. It is the kind of story where no one would ever dare question the integrity of the characters due to their circumstances. However, I had to question the characters. They are fictional after all, “Scratches on a page.” They do not represent the pain of real people like my Aunt and Mother who had Cancer or my Uncle and Grandmother who both died from it. Not everyone gets wishes but yet I continued reading... As I questioned these ghosts, I kept seeing through the thin assumptions. Instead of filling in the gaps, as no reader should have to, I kept doubting the motivations and intent of the author. I kept hearing his voice booming out of impossibly intelligent monologues. I could not, no matter how hard I tried, suspend my disbelief. Each misplaced notion jumped off the page projecting a stretch of credulity. Each simple conversation felt like a sleepy walk in the park, like a cover band complacent to play whatever song the audience desired to hear. In the harshest terms I would call this book commercially contrived, a search engine soup of teenage emotions painted with an algorithmic brush. Yet, I continued reading... Despite having said these unpleasant things, I would suggest that you should also read it. As I have admitted, I am jaded in the worst possible way. The truth is that I'm a huge fan of John Green and his brother Hank. I adore what they are doing to better educate today's “internet infected” youth. I wish them all the luck that their hard work and creativity can produce. That is why I feel terrible about writing this. I wanted to like the book as much as I like them. I wanted to rise above my petty jealousy by giving John a proper review, but I can't or I couldn't, at least not at first. Perhaps my stories are a true reflection of myself. No one could ever relate to the misadventures of my unusual and tragically disadvantaged life. My books are the same way – too unique for public bonding. Therein lies the real quandary. John writes about the people and places that slowly transformed him into the amazing person he is today. Maybe that is why his stories are becoming as beloved as he is. Conversely my path created a writer who is merely “A failed experiment” and due to my faults, I'm not so easy to love. That's when it hit me. I'm just like the characters – damaged by fate, grasping for meaning, wrestling with obscurity and doomed against the tides. Suddenly I too could relate to this story. Just because the vessel of the message is flawed doesn't mean that the message is not important. The Fault in our Stars is that only some people get to enjoy the peaks of idyllic destinies while others merely survive the troughs. The latter must accept that the only ride they have ever known is the best they will ever have, that they can't change the stars. It will all be over before anyone truly grasps what has happened or what was lost. With this sentiment John has elevated the argument for compassion. I had to read a little longer and search a little deeper to get his meaning but I found it and it was worth finding. By the end of the book my cynicism had died. Disbelief bled from my eyes like a river that was part guilt, part self pity. I cried because I knew how meaningful this story would be for many people and I feared I might never write one to match its beauty. This journey had been emotionally traumatic. Now that it is over I feel better about my place in the world. I feel grateful for those who have come to appreciate me. Maybe I was never meant to match the absurd expectations of my imagination but that's a good thing. If I had too much of the wrong attention, I'd never be properly focused on those who deserve my love and affection. As for the movie, I'm sorry to say that I won't be watching it. I simply can't go through all of this again.