Review: The Fault In Our Stars by John Green (or, WHY?!)

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Dutton (an imprint of Penguin Teen), 313 Pages
Released: January 10, 2012

Challenges: Completely Contemp Challenge


Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 12, 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.
------------------Goodreads summary

Notable Quote

(I can't tell you how hard it was for me to not just paste the ENTIRE GODDAMN NOVEL here)

"I love you present tense."

I'm starting this review not even 20 minutes after I finished reading the book, and that's probably a big mistake because my eyes are still that sort of blurry and my face is still wet and my nose is still in that awkward snotty-drying-up phase that makes me all sorts of sexy, but I'm feeling all the feels and want to type now. I'll probably do a Save Draft and come back later to make this coherent and worthy of being read by the public, for now, this'll have to do.

There were a lot of ways I wanted to start this review:
1) I wanted to say how I'd heard so many things about it already and knew it was a complete sobfest that alters your world, and that was weighing heavily at me as I began. And I even tweeted this:

And it was like 15 pages in I was laughing and falling in love with Gus already and all I could do was whimper after every laugh because I could feel that all these giggles were at the brink of something else, too.

2) I wanted to start with a series of "Why" questions, such as: WHY JOHN GREEN, WHY?! and WHY, Gus, WHY?! and Why did this end?! and Why did I do this to myself?! and Why can I not stop wanting everything from this book?!

3) With that quote that every reader immediately picked out of the first 40 pages as an Absolute Truth:

“‎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.  And then there are books which you can't tell other people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.”

4) or tell you how I actually did not want to read this book because I feared how much it would make me feel. I was so scared that it would reach into some of the most hidden corners of my mind and turn me inside out and make me cry and scream and yell and love so hard it would ache (which it did, but I'll get to all that later.)  In fact, the only reason I did finally read it is because I wanted to participate in Tracey's YA Book Club (thanks Jon for posting about it!) and their pick was TFIOS.

Truthfully, I, too, believe in that quote from #3, and I know I'm going to do it a disservice by talking about it. I didn't even want to call this a "review" so much as a "discussion" (perhaps even a "coveting") because sometimes there are words that are grouped and placed together in such a beautiful, special sequence that they can make a novel that speaks directly to the deepest recesses of your soul and you know that nothing will ever possibly come close to expressing how it makes you feel.  This book is an Emotion in itself.

You should really read the book. I don't want to say much more because...you just have to experience it.  And I will pitch it like this:

The Fault In Our Stars will fill your heart with love, and make you feel so privileged to get to know Hazel and Augustus, and make you laugh as you see their relationship build and what it means to their lives as Cancer Kids. And this book will make you bawl, it will tear your heart out and make you question humanity and mortality and oblivion and infinities and what it really is to be a grenade in neither the Jersey Shore nor Bruno Mars* way.  You will close the book often while reading it because it positively overwhelms you to the point you have to consciously tell yourself to breath; and then you will open the book back up just as quickly because it feels wrong to not keep going with Hazel. You will feel lucky, as though your own lifeline has expanded, to befriend Hazel and Augustus; you will be grateful to have witnessed their time together; and you will weep as you understand just how sincerely that they do not have "if"s, only "when"s.

And it is perfect.

Rating The Fault in Our Stars feels insufficient because it's so much more than stars, but because I am nothing if not consistent:

5 Stars / 5

(and thousands and thousands of constellations more)

PS. A note on the actual writing of it, John Green is a freakin' master. How he writes through the characters as though he is speaking directly to the reader is brilliant. I felt like Gus was apologizing to me for hiding it, I felt like Hazel was texting me why she couldn't hold his hand, I felt like I was listening to Van Houton spew asswad things to me. A MASTER, I tell you.

PPS. While I'm happy for John Green that this has been optioned as a movie, I am so unhappy with that. I cannot imagine this as a film because part of experiencing this story wholly was reading the descriptions and just following along with it. I feel like having the visual clues and environments will...detract from it all. But you know, I'll see it of course, and hopefully it's done in a different way that I'll also love.

*in the interest of full disclosure, I do not watch Jersey Shore, and I absolutely abhor Bruno Mars. So yeah, I'm making A LOT of fun of them. :)

What did you think of the book? Love it? Didn't like it?  What was the first line you cried at?