Review Time!!! The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 13, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs... for now. 

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault. 

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

Going into it I knew that this book would make me cry. In fact I expected it. I was waiting for it. What I didn't realize, was how much this book would make me laugh.

I knew that this was a book was going to be a lot about death. I did not expect that it would show me so much about what it means to live.

The Fault in Our Stars tells the story of Hazel and Augustus, two teenagers with completely different kinds of cancer. Hazel walks around with an oxygen tank because her lungs are stupid. She is dying from her extremely rare form of cancer. Augustus is in remission from a highly curable form of cancer. (Curable, as in they cut off such and such limb in order to save you). They meet in a support group for cancer kids and that is where this story truly begins.

Even through some of the worst and most heart wrenching tears, this book made me smile so much. I loved it. I loved it. I FREAKING LOVED IT.  No other book in the Young Adult reading world is more hyped, but even with all of the incredibly high expectations I had before starting this book it still could not compare. I was, and am still so stunned by how amazing this book was. I did not disappoint me in any way. This book is even better than all the hype it gets online.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this book is how much a story about two dying teenagers could celebrate life, and love. It would have been so easy to simply captivate me with the story of two very lovely people falling in love, but it was so much more than that. Hazel and Augustus felt so real to me. John Green’s phenomenal writing made me feel such an unwavering connection to these two. It was amazing to see just how much he understood about people’s need to have closure and meaning in their lives.

This book broke my heart in more ways than I could possibly imagine, but we often forgive the things we love when they hurt us. Sometimes the pain is important in ways we cannot understand. Even when I would stop and sleep, I would dream of this book and it would break my heart all over again. That’s how I know that this is a book I will be reading again and again for years to come.

This is one of my favorite quotes from the novel. 

I know John says on his website that he spent about a decade writing this book, and once it was over he was so glad to be rid of it. Well, I would like to say thank you John. Thank-you for creating this story, these amazing characters for us to enjoy, for breaking my heart, making me laugh, for writing perhaps the saddest story I have ever read, and finally, thank-you for the Venn-diagrams.

If you haven’t read this book then just start it. Trust me you will not regret it. 

Comment below and let me know what you think of this novel! :)