Review: The Fault in Our Stars - John Green

Where I got it: My collection
Rating: 4.5 stars  
Cover Rating: 4 stars (I don't love it, but I don't hate it in any way. It's just a touch boring is all.)
Genre: Young Adult
Publication Date: January 10, 2012
Publisher: Dutton Books
Page Count: 313 p.
Buy it: Book Depository / Amazon
Add it: Goodreads

Yeah sure, this is a cancer book, but, it's not about cancer. It's about strength and fun and books. It's about how a novel can transform you and sometimes amazing books are written by terrible people (looking at you OSC). It's about a girl named Hazel and a boy named Augustus and all the people that care about them. It's about blind and one-legged teens egging a car. It's about finding happiness where you can. It's about moving on. It's about making this day your best day.

"My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations." That's a pretty good review for this book right there...

Seriously though, this was such a great book. So many lines that just kick you right in the gut. It's surprising  because this book is really funny too. So you'll be reading along, chuckling at the banter between the characters and then all of a sudden BAM! This shit just got serious. It totally works though, because that's how lots of people deal with hard things. They wrap it up into something funny and more manageable.

Hazel was a great character. She just felt so real and honest. I loved how she was addicted to a novel. I've never been that obsessed with one novel before (yet) and it just seems amazing and wonderful. The only problem is this novel is fictional and now I want to read it and I can't. Fairly disappointing  but I guess less disappointing than if I read it and it was awful. Back to Hazel though, it was great having her be our main eyes and ears and brain for this story. She was a really honest narrator and she picked some pretty great people to hang around with. She acted real with her parents too. Not all "I hate you!" or "We're BFFs for LIFE!" but a nice mix in-between. It was easy to like Hazel, because she was nice person all around.

I feel like this review needs to mention how amazing Isaac is. The Fault in Our Stars is always talked about HAZELANDAUGUSTUS!!!! which is fine, but ISAAC too. He lost his eyes to cancer and he was worried about his love life. He was just a really great character too and I wished he was in the novel a bit more. He really changed the outlook of the novel. He was so spirited that it didn't make his situation seem utterly depressing. I mean it still completely sucks having eye cancer I imagine, but he made himself into a person that could get past that and live life. Although, I have no idea what was going on with him internally this whole time, maybe he was miserable...secretly.

Now Augustus. For how much charm he seemed to exuded, he also seemed incredibly awkward. He definitely tried way too hard a lot of the time. I have to agree with Hazel, that when he let all that slide away he was a much more awesome person. He was much more love-able without all that stuffy charm.

The last few sentences of this novel were a bit flat. I felt like there should have been something more EPIC. But, life is a bit flat I guess.

The last third of this book had me flailing my arms around much like a giant squid of anger. Life is so unfair. I know nobody ever said it was fair and it's childish(hopeful) to think that it is, but still. I mean WHY!? It just so awful that good people have to suffer while there are terrible, terrible people out there who get to live happy lives doing all their terrible things. They should be the one-eyed, one-legged, oxygen bearers of this world, not teens who are good people.
“It’s not fair,” I said. “It’s just so goddamned unfair.”
“The world,” he said, “is not a wish granting factory,”

So yes, please read this book. When you get to the end throw this book. Smash this book, tear the pages from this book to wipe your face with. Afterwards buy a new book and place it on your shelf for next time.

First Line:
"Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house and spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death."

Favorite Lines:
"His every syllable flirted."

"In the end, we both lost. So it goes." 

"Augustus and I were together in the Improbably Creatures Club: us and the duck-billed platypuses."

"It seemed like forever ago, like we'd had this brief but still infinite forever."

"I owed a debt to the universe that only my attention could repay, and also that I owed a debt to everybody who didn't get to be a person anymore and everyone who hadn't gotten to be a person yet."