The Fault In Our Stars

A few weeks ago I finished reading the Fault In Our Stars by John Green, and it was absolutely fantastic. John Green has an amazing ability to be able to breathe life into each individual character as well as the story, leaving nothing lacking and no one wanting any more than presented, whilst still leaving an impression on the reader to last months after they've read it.

First off, Green takes a topic that is normally boring and overused in a story and makes it upbeat, fresh, and ultimately beautiful. Hazel Grace has terminal cancer, and she's resigned herself to a life of living at home, rereading her favorite book, and being forced to attend a support group every Sunday. But John Green doesn't make his book about the story of Hazel Grace, of how she changed her ways and found true meaning in life and started a charity organization for kids with cancer and helped millions of children or something. He makes the story about what happens when Hazel meets Augustus Waters, a boy she meets at the support group one day, who is in remission, and all too much healthier than she is. How Hazel doesn't want to let herself fall in love with him, because she knows that she's going to die, and why should she grow so close to him only to hurt him in the end. The first half of the book spends this time exploring the boundaries that Hazel has put up between the two, and when she finally begins to break them down, suddenly Augustus has a relapse and the sides are being switched and now Hazel he's the one who is dying. She's spent all this time protecting him that she'd forgotten the possiblitly that she could be the one left behind in the end. The story is truly heartbreaking and I was in tears all throughout the last hundred or so pages, but it was really worth it.

Green provides the perfect balance between detail and movement of the plot. He spends no time mincing on words, keeping the story moving at a steady pace whilst still leaving time for cute moments of character developement and quirky jokes. His writing style embodies whoever he is describing at the moment, and each and every character is completely unique whilst still remaining within the boundaries of a realistic personality for that age group. Even Patrick, the counselor at the Cancer Support Group who probably had a total of two pages worth of story with him in it, I still feel like I know him thoroughly.

All I can say is, I cannot stress how much I would reccomend this book to anyone. It was absolutely perfect and I feel writing anymore would just overstate how strongly I love this book.