Hazel Grace Lancaster has Cancer and even though she has been taking a miracle drug that shrinks the Cancer cells for years, she is still dying. Wanting her to interact with other people, her mother forces her to go to a local Cancer survivor support group. Here she meets a new friend, Isaac and a new love, Augustus, Gus, Waters. The book is Grace and Augusts’ story of falling in love despite the fact that they both suffer from a disease that will ultimately kill them.
Title: The Fault In Our Stars
Author: John Green
Publication Date: 2012
Publisher: Dutton Books
Number of Pages: 318
Where I Got It: Target
Dates I Read It: June 16 & 17, 2013
Number of Stars: 4/5
Read It For: YA Pick- June 2013
I have wanted to read this one for a long time. I've been hearing
amaz-ball things about it and it seems that every blog I read and every
YouTuber I watch has read, loved and reviewed this book. I am 100% in love with
John Green. So, I quit waiting around for the paperback to come out or for the
library to get in a copy so I did something that I rarely do- in the hopes of
this book being as amazing as everyone kept telling me that it would be, I
bought a hardback copy! Last week my mom, my aunt and I went to the beach for a
week and this was one of the books that I took. In fact, this was the one book
that I read entirely while at the beach (I also finished Ender's Game and started Tell
The Wolves I'm Home). I was able to read it in two days partly because it
was a YA book which means not as long as an adult fiction book and partly
because it was really good. It wasn't the mind-blowing, change-your-life,
read-a-million-times book, but it was pretty damn good! As a warning, I'm going
to include "spoilers" throughout this review so if you've not read it
yet and you want to go into it with fresh eyes, then stop reading now and go
pick up your copy.
So we have a few select characters and I
loved each of them. What was so amazing about the characters is that they were
still real kids at heart despite these awful diseases that were claiming their
bodies. They played copious amounts of video games, they watched copious
amounts of mindless television, they dealt with annoying and overbearing
parents, they fell in love and they got their hearts broken. I was pretty blown
away by the dialogue between the characters. Several of the reviews that I
either read or watched for this book also mentioned that the vocabulary and the
manner of speaking that the teenagers used was pretty distracting and very
unrealistic. Despite the fact that the way of speaking was not entirely true to
life, thanks to John Green’s genius, it was still really well done and
beautifully written. Another thing that I was somewhat disappointed in was
Hazel’s lack of character development. Every other character in the book
developed in major ways throughout the course of the story, yet Hazel didn't seem to join any of them and she remained somewhat flat for me for the duration
of the book. Hazel was a difficult protagonist for me because she was very likable but she wasn't very believable, especially towards the end. She was
confronted with so many dilemmas that I thought for sure that she would grow
the most and I was very disheartened when she developed the least. One thing that I adored about this book was the fact that unlike in most YA
novels, the parents were not just background figures but they were actual
characters in the story themselves with actual plot lines and secrets of their
own. Augustus was himself until the end. He was a fully developed character from
the beginning and it will be hard for any female reader to not fall in love
with him. Isaac was very endearing. If I ever lose my sight I hope that I can take it as
well as Isaac does. In typical teenage fashion, he was more preoccupied with a
break up! Peter Van Houten is the author of Hazel’s favorite book. I love when writers
write about writers. Though we don’t get a great deal of interaction with
Peter, he remained true to character and was douchy til the end, yet as readers
we can’t fault him for it and I ended up liking him very much.
I really enjoyed the story and french-a-llama if I didn’t cry! I’m
grateful to this book because it made me very grateful for what I do have. It
was beautifully written and the pacing was well done. I loved how it ended; it
was foreshadowed that the book would end this way throughout so I was expecting
it (both the events as well as they stylistic choice to end it where he did). At
its heart this is a story about falling in love and what it’s like for a
teenager to be in love with a dash of disease and death thrown in. Despite what
I thought going into the book it is not a book about death or dying or disease,
but about living, however brief it may be. It’s about finding yourself or in
the case of some of the characters, re-discovering yourself.
Like I said earlier the dialogue was somewhat distracting as it
was very unrealistic for teenagers to engage in conversation the way that these
characters did. John Green’s writing style is all his own which is to say
exceedingly sharp and engaging. What really amazed me in this book was how well
he wrote a female protagonist, he did it better than many female writers! Having
read Will Grayson, Will Grayson (and
loving it) and now being impressed with this novel, I started researching Mr.
Green online and I discovered his YouTube channel that he does with his
brother, Hank, called Vlogbrothers and if you've not experienced this yet then you
have been missing out! I encourage you to leave my blog and stop reading my
review and go to watch his videos right now. That’s how good they are! He also
does a series called CrashCourse in which he explains significant events in
history and literature and science in a humorous and relatable way! After you've watched all of the Vlogbrothers videos and come back here to finish the review,
I now encourage you to leave again to go see CrashCourse. And speaking of
leaving the blog and going to watch other things I wanted to include
Elizzebooks review of the Fault in Our Stars because she is able to capture
John Green’s writing style perfectly:
The story was set in
Indiana which really didn't matter to me, this was a story that could have been
set anywhere in the US and it still would have rang true. The theme is
universal and everyone can relate whether they be a Cancer patient, survivor,
teenager, or someone in love. At one point in the novel the characters get to
go to Amsterdam and I didn't like this part of the book while I was reading it,
but after finishing the novel and reflecting on it, this was actually perfectly
done. Amsterdam was the best setting for what happens there and it was an
amazing crescendo for the characters to climb to before the end of the book.
I am very glad that I
finally joined the bandwagon and read this book and I encourage you to as well.
There is something that everyone can get from it. It wasn't as earth-shattering
as I had hoped, thus the only 4 stars, yet it was terrifically done and beautifully
written and it did invoke an emotional reaction from me.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings." –William Shakespeare from Julius Caesar
