Read This: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

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.

I know I’ve said before on here how LOOKING FOR ALASKA is one of my favorite YA novels of all time. I loved that book. I devoured that book and then ran out and bought everything else John Green had written … and … if I’m being totally honest, none of those books had the same magic for me that ALASKA did. I mean, they were John Green, so they were laugh-out-loud funny, incredibly well written and highly entertaining, but I think maybe I was holding ALASKA on a pedestal and believing nothing could ever top it.

And then THE FAULT IN OUR STARS went and did just that. This book sucker punched me the same way Green’s debut did. The two main characters, Hazel and Augustus, leap off the page. You pity them (and then feel bad for pitying them because the last thing either of them want is your pity). You laugh at their witty repartee (and then ignore the fact that no one actually talks like that because you just don’t care). And in the end, you cry at the unfairness of this fictional situation (and then maybe cry at the unfairness of life in general). And finally you realize that this is the kind of book that will change you and you recommend it to everyone you know. Or … at least I did.

Have you read THE FAULT IN OUR STARS yet? What did you think?

Follow