Book Review : The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green Product Details Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Dutton Juvenile (January 10, 2012) Language: English ISBN-10: 0525478817 ISBN-13:  978-0525478812 Hey John, you sure do know how to write freaking sad stories don't you?  Btw, I actually 'google'-ed that An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten for God's sake! Oh well... F.Y.I people, this book is John Green's fourth 'solo' novel, and his first time writing from the point of view of a girl.    "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings."- Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)   Summary from Goodreads: 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. It sounds wrong for me to say that I love a book about kids with cancer, because I hate that these poor kids even have cancer in the first place. But as always, John Green managed to spin that magic somehow. The Star-Crossed Lovers: Meet Hazel Grace Lancaster - 16 years old Stage IV  thyroid cancer survivor with "lungs that suck at being lungs". She's probably the best nerd any of you could meet. She is a very very intelligent young woman. Funny? Yes, and sarcastic too. Adorable? Yes. Adventurous? Yes. A Nerdfighter? Totally! "I'm Hazel. Sixteen. Thyroid originally but with an impressive and long-settled satellite colony in my lungs. And I'm doing okay." Hello Augustus Waters! - 17 years old charming, self-effacing, funny, insecure, worried, and heartbroken former basketball player who has lost a leg to osteosarcoma,   He knows what he wants out of life, and isn’t afraid to stare death in the face as he keeps an unlit cigarette in his mouth most of the time. "My name is Augustus Waters, I'm seventeen. I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but I'm just here today at Isaac's request." “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 book which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.”    - Hazel   I honestly cannot criticise this novel in any shape or form. It has become one of my favourite books of all time, and I know I am never going to part with it. There are so many things I want to say about this book but I’m so afraid I might not get them all right. There's just so so much emotion throughout this whole book that it was just so hard not to feel them. I remember reading it in the train once, and I was telling myself not to cry (you guys know what it's like to get a lot of strange looks when you try to choke back tears, right?).  John Green, you broke my heart, AGAIN! 'Young Adult'? Like seriously? Considering the gravity and scope of all the human experiences in it? You have got to be kidding me! I mean there's love, loss, illness, tragedy and DEATH! Come on! "I fell in love with the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once." I tried hard to not get too attached to them, because they'll die eventually, but I guess I failed. I love both of them so much, I mean it's hard not to. Sigh... I'm not gonna tell you guys anything about the ending. You have got to read the book to actually know what happened. Don't go around reading other reviews about it. My life ended just when the book did.  HEY! GO BUY THE BOOK! You won't regret it, I promise! This is indeed an uplifting book that celebrates the importance of life, being in love, friendship and living your life to the fullest. Thank you, John Green, for writing hours of consuming, inspiring, beautiful words.  Oh hey Gus, this one's for you,...(spoilers alert!) 1.  "My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because-like all real love stories- it will die with us, as it should. I'd hoped that he'd be eulogizing me, because there's no one I'd rather have..." I started crying. "Okay, how not to cry. How am I- okay. Okay."  I took a few breaths and went back to the page. "I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”- Hazel Lancaster 2. 'Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should've gotten more.'  'Seventeen,' Gus corrected.  'I'm assuming you've got some time, you interupting bastard.  'I'm telling you,' Isaac continued, 'Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.  'But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.'- Isaac Rating:  Please let this be the official soundtrack of this book! Because, it's AWESOME! DFTBA! John Green is a New York Times bestselling author who has received numerous awards, including both the Printz Medal and a Printz Honor. John is also the cocreator (with his brother, Hank) of the popular video blog  Brotherhood 2.0 , which has been watched more than 30 million times by Nerdfighter fans all over the globe. John Green lives in Indianapolis, Indiana.