The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars
John Green
313 pages

“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.” -Hazel Lancaster, page 33

Sixteen year-old Hazel, a girl diagnosed with Stage IV Thyroid in her lungs, says the above about An Imperial Affliction, a book she has read dozens of times through.

I believe it should be said about this book.

Hazel has always felt like she was a grenade ready to blow up, hurting everyone around her; a side-effect of death. When she attends the Cancer Kid Support Group one evening, not only does she find friendship in Isaac, a boy soon to go blind, but in Augustus Waters, who just won't, stop, staring, at her. Together, the three will ride "the roller coaster that only goes up", which is one of sickness, health, humor, and love.

I read this book from start to finish in the course of today. I believe you can too. The Fault in Our Stars is so tragic, yet so compelling with humor and happiness, I had myself fixed somewhere in between laughing and crying the whole way through.

Green gave his characters such dimension, such charisma, that I felt I knew them as if I had been reading a series worth of them, instead of a single book. They take you on a journey, suck you into their life, and feed you their thoughts and dreams with a spoon made of delicate prose.

This is the kind of book I like best, a book with so much feeling, that you turn the last page and want to do something, anything, then and there to fix this insane and mostly unfair world.