The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is not an easy book to review, so if this doesn’t turn out quite the way I want it to I need you to just trust me on this one—it’s a fantastic book a
nd you should read it. Here goes nothing.
The story centers around the relationship of Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters, two teenagers with cancer who meet at a support group. Hazel is being kept alive by a drug that shouldn’t have worked but did, along with trickled oxygen from a tank, and Augustus is in remission after losing his leg to bone cancer. They bond over the book An Imperial Affliction (which doesn’t actually exist) written by a reclusive Dutch author who is the only person Hazel can think of who a) knows what it’s like to be dying and b) isn’t dead. Hazel is haunted by the unanswered questions in the novel (it ends midsentence), and Hazel and Augustus embark on a journey together to find the author and get some answers.
I fully understand that this does not sound like an exceptional or even a very original book so far. Bear with me. Though the plot sounds clichéd in this short format, the characters and Green’s pure talent make the used story new again. Hazel and Augustus are quirky, smart teens who have been forced to grow into adults early because of their disease, but their conversations and Hazel’s clever and biting narration bring this story to life and made me fall in love with them. They are the rare characters that I feel I know well enough and like enough to want to be friends with them. Through the two of them, Green explores heavy topics such as love, death, and legacy that could easily lapse into dullness or abstractness, but he does it with finesse and manages to make them interesting.
I’m not the only one who thought The Fault in Our Stars was fantastic—it was TIME Magazine’s best fiction book of 2012, and positive reviews litter the internet. It’s also a favorite of Kathleen Caldwell, the owner of A Great Good Place for Books in Montclair, so go pick up a copy. Seriously.
