The Fault in Our Stars book review

The Fault in Our Stars

John Green

Genre: teen, real life, cancer, young adult, love story

Release Date: January 10, 2012

Storyline: The storyline focuses on Hazel Grace Lancaster who has cancer. Her parents make her go to a cancer patients’ support group where she meets a boy named Augustus Waters. The two end up feeling a spark and this book follows their story.

Characters:

Hazel Grace is amazing! She is super smart and has a very quick wit. There is also this philosophical element to her that I completely enjoyed. I didn’t feel like she fell into any of the typical categories of female leads. She also makes a cool comparison between a dragon and one of her breathing machines which I laughed at.

Augustus is just perfect! He has this amazing humor and quick wit that makes it so easy to just fall in love with him.

Isaac (who doesn’t get a whole lot of face time in the story) had an amazing story going on. He could have really had a book all to himself. He is definitely a support character in this book though, but I was still connected to him and concerned for his well-being.

Her parents are handling the whole thing quite well. I’ve been reading a lot of books with horrible parents, so it was refreshing to see such amazing parents. They had their faults, but they are overall great parents.

Augustus’s family was nifty to read about, because their personalities seemed to be thought out rather than just random people in the background.

Peter Van Houten is quite an interesting character in the book. He provides a much needed contrast, and my feelings towards him definitely changed throughout the book to a very complicated mix. There is a moment in the book that he completed angered me by talking about characters within novels and just bashing connecting with characters from novels (that has to deal with the book lover within me though!).

Random Thoughts:

There a quite a lot of words that I did look up. It is definitely a higher level of comprehension kind of book. There is also a lot of philosophical discussion in the book so it is definitely more aimed towards people who enjoy a more thought provoking kind of book. (i.e. sobriquet, ontologically, hamartia)

The descriptions can get a little dry at times, but they are few of them within the book. It is almost like there was too much time spent on details that weren’t going to be sticking around for long.

I did read this book rather quickly. I enjoyed the pacing at the beginning of the book. I believe it was about chapter 15 that it felt like it randomly picked up speed and got weird. The weirdness doesn’t last long, because you get used to it quickly.

The plot of this book wasn't super predictable. My original guess for the plot actually ended up being wrong! There were some questions that I was left with at the end of the book that echoed the thoughts of Hazel about her favorite book.

The humor in this book is right up my alley; it is definitely on the darker side of things and quite sarcastic. The characters poke fun at their own conditions and illnesses. There are also some amazing quotes from the book such as: 

"Some infinities are bigger than other infinities."

"The world is not a wish granting factory." 

"That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt."

I highly suggest this book, because I absolutely adored it! WARNING though, it will probably pull at those heart strings of yours and make you cry.

Overall, it was a lovely story, and I was definitely invested in the characters. On top of telling an amazingly gripping story, it makes you ponder about certain things like death and other philosophical things. I really wish I had read this book sooner!

If you'd like to read some thoughts written by the author, you should check out this site: Question about The Fault in Our Stars LINK. He writes some amazing stuff and I absolute loved reading more about his thoughts on his story.