Title of Book: The Fault in Our Stars
Author: John Green
Page #: 313Star Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
 Why This Book has Value:
The exquisite novel starts out with Hazel. Hazel is a 17 year old girl with thyroid cancer and a satellite colony in her lungs, completely obsessed with the book “An Imperial Affliction”. Due to her being depressed (an effect of dying,) her mom makes her go to a support group “In the heart of Jesus Christ.” One way of explaining it through Hazel is, it sucks. But one day she meets Augustus, a charismatic, now cancer free, teen smart ellect obsessed with metaphors and utterly afraid of oblivion. He and Hazel immediately become friends along with Isaac who dragged Augustus into the Support Group in the first place. They introduce each other to amazing things, including Hazel showing him The Imperial Affliction. When he finishes it, they both agree they need answers. To get them, they travel all the way to Amsterdam where the author lives. On this amazing adventure, they experience loss, frustration, grief, what it feels like to have death shadowing your every step, but most of all, love. They both conquer their worst fears and learn that maybe it is all worth it.
Don’t even get me started on John Green (author of this amazing story.) He is my author crush (In other words, he is the author who has made me fall in love with every word he has ever written.) He has an amazing blog and vlog involving everything from his books to history, making him a great communicator even outside his novels (at least virtually, I’ve never met the man.) I think he has really developed since his first novel Looking for Alaska, but yet I love that book as much as I love TFIOS.
In this novel we see Hazel and Augustus deal with real-world issues, a lot of them. Obviously, since it’s the subject matter, we see cancer and how they both deal or dealt with it. We also see them deal with teen sexual frustration, the effects of dying, young love and real love, grief, death, pretty much all the good stuff. “And yet still I worried. I liked being a person. I wanted to keep at it. worry is yet another side effect of dying.” Hazel points out that depression and worry are both effects of dying throughout the story. When Augustus tells Hazel that he loves her he says, “I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.” This is probably the best love confession I have ever read, whether it’s an adult book or a child book, this is the one that truly made my heart clench. When they speak of death, Augustus says, “I believe in that line from An Imperial Affliction. ‘The risen sun, and the light is too bright and her eyes are losing but they aren’t lost. I don’t believe we return to haunt or comfort the living or anything, but I think something becomes of us.” I thought this showed what he thought would happen to him hypothetically.Even if their lives have come up short, I’ve got to say they have experienced life, no matter how short theirs turn out to be (I’m trying not to be cold, so if that sounded cold I completely apologize.)
Now to discussing characters and how they develop throughout the book. Of course we see as Hazel grows throughout the book. She feels as though she is a grenade who is going to blow up in everyone’s faces when she dies so she wants to minimize the casualties. She says to Augustus the reason she is a vegetarian is, “I want to minimize the number of deaths I am responsible for,” I said.” But she soon finds that that will never really be living and she has to do that for herself. She also realizes everyone will go on without her after she is gone, like her parents. Then there’s Augustus *swoons.* Gosh do I love that boy. He is (as you can see) my favorite character for so many reasons. First of all, he is so positive and upbeat and humorous at all times. I love his obsession with metaphors and the way he loves Hazel so deeply. I guess the first biggest draw to him other than attraction for Hazel was his cigarette metaphor. “They don’t kill you unless you light them cigarettes,” he said as Mom arrived at the curb. “And I’ve never lit one. It’s a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.” We find that he is, although he has all the most amazing qualities, selfish. He didn’t tell Hazel about how he was dying until she had “sealed the deal” with how much she loved him. Although, as I think about it, you could also see this as his way of getting her out of her shell. She already feels as though she’s a grenade, what is she gonna feel like after she finds out he is one too? She would have distanced her romantic feelings even more. There’s also his fear with oblivion. He says when we are first introduced to him, “I fear oblivion,” he said without a moment’s pause. “I fear it like the proverbial blind man who’s afraid of the dark.”  I think this is really what he overcame through the story. He was so scared of not being remembered by everyone vaguely like Cleopatra and George Washington that he didn’t think about how Hazel and his parents and Isaac would remember him so intimately. I can never figure out when he realizes this because we are at all times in Hazel’s head, but I believe we see it (at least in the movie) when Hazel reads him his eulogy.
This book definitely has a specific target audience. It really targets teenage girls, but I have found that guys my age, and adults of both genders, have all enjoyed the book. Really, my overall question to John Green would be “Since you are obviously not a teenage girl and never were one, how on Earth do you write so eloquently to their hearts?” I guess I’ll have to email the author myself....
Overall, I have found this book amazing. I, as a professional teen book critic (not that I’ve ever been hired, I just am in my head,) I would give this book a 4.5 out of 5. But, if I was just being non judgemental and just falling in love with the characters and the plot line, then it would definitely be a 1000000000000 out of 5.