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The Fault in Our Stars
by John Green
genre: YA, literary fiction
I’m trying a slightly different review style. Please let me know if you liked it or if you want me to return to the old style by leaving a comment at the end of the post.
Synopsis from Goodreads
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.
Initial Thoughts
Cover: No idea what the book is about but it’s been a #1 best seller on Amazon for over 500 days and it was on one of the book lists I pinned even though I don’t remember which one.
There was a brief mention of the book on the radio and a review called it “The most romantic book of all time.” I like romance.
First 20%: This is about cancer kids. This is going to be depressing. Oh my gosh, this is the most romantic book of all time. This is not Snow White or Cinderella where the characters have less than 24 hours of contact before they’re engaged. This is better than Beauty and the Beast. It’s believable and the characters have time to fall in love. Possibly the best written YA book I’ve ever read, at least where the character development is concerned. John Green, what is wrong with you that you chose that for your cover? Augustus is one of the most incredible male love interests anywhere.
Full Review
The pacing, accents, and intonation of the narration truly adds to the story. Few books would I specifically recommend the Audible version over the paperback, but this is one of them. Even though I had an idea what was coming, I didn’t know. It wasn’t the thing I feared most, but it was more heartbreaking than what I feared. Let’s face it: it’s a book about teenagers with cancer, one of whom has been diagnosed as terminal. The chances of a happy ending are slim, but it’s a best selling novel for a reason. There are many books I love, but fewer have me wishing I could write that well. This is one of those books.
The Characters
This is a character driven novel (as opposed to a plot driven novel). I absolutely adore them. Their illness and love of literature has given them an extraordinary vocabulary and imagination when it comes to weaving words together. When writing an ad to try to find a home for the swing set that Hazel is no longer healthy enough to enjoy, she suggests, “Lonely, vaguely pedophilic swing set seeks the butts of children.” How can you not love teens who talk like that? Even the minor characters express themselves in ways that made me smile: “Oh I got over [being dumped], Darling. It took a sleeve of thin mints and 40 mins to get over that boy.”
The romance between Hazel and Augustus gave me goosebumps. It is probably one of the best written love stories of all time. No cliche moments. No romance for the sake of Hollywood. The relationship grows naturally and they spend time just spending time together, thus eliminating The Bachelor Effect (where the romance only works in a vacuum before everyone has to get back to read life).
Book Club Discussions
Hazel claims that bad things have no effect on your enjoyment of the good. She argues that the existence of broccoli doesn’t make chocolate taste better or that by not having any bad weather days, you won’t still appreciate the sun. I disagree. In the winter, we whine for heat; in the summer, we whine for cold.
How many people do you know who doodled instead of listening to the professor or skipped class? Those of us who have never had to fight for the right to go to school may not appreciate it as much as girls in the Middle East who have been denied the ability to go to school. Even Hazel admits that someone who loses an eight year old to cancer would appreciate the extra eight years of losing a sixteen year old.
5 out of 5 stars
Related Reviews
- Ermisenda’s review of The Fault in Our Stars
To see what other books we’ve reviewed, check out our book reviews page.
Ermilia 
For a long time , this book has been among top 5 of the TBR pile. Its time I picked it. Thanks for the lovely review 🙂
I hope you enjoy the book. Come back and tell us what you think 🙂
I like broccoli and chocolate. OMG I’m beginning to sound like Laurence Olivier in ‘Spartacus’!
I read this book and was very disappointed – maybe I had very high expectations from seeing it had a very good rating on Goodreads. But there were a lot of things in this novel which I found inaccurate and unrealistic.
Firstly, why are Hazel and Gus cancer kids when there is hardly any insight into cancer life? It feels like they could have met anywhere and fallen in love and then Gus could have died of a car accident. My point is, I did not understand the meaning of why they have cancer. Almost to the point of believing that Green used cancer as a way to make it more dramatic, because most people who read this book don’t know a thing about cancer and so they feel more sympathetic towards them both.
So I am very disappointed that there was hardly any detail and conflict to do with cancer. My little sister has leukaemia and TFioS was nothing like my sister’s life. It seems Hazel’s treatment is very nice and comfortable – but chemo has so many bad effects, including vomitting, tiredness. Not to mention the fact that I doubt cancer kids are allowed to go overseas during treatment … And then what about check-ups? How often does Hazel go to the hospital for blood tests and scans? So what’s the point of this cancer when there’s hardly anything about it? That really bothered me. I do not consider this book a “cancer” book. At all.
The romance was pretty bad, too, I don’t understand how people find it so beautiful when it is so average and normal. Once again, I think you just find it beautiful because Hazel and Gus have cancer and they’re going to die – but truth is, every romance in the world is a tragedy because someone always dies! What is so special about theirs? Gus invites Hazel over to his place on the day they met – isn’t that a little odd? Sure, they get on well with each other, and their conversations might be funny. Although even the dialogue in this book was strange, especially Gus’ long, philosophical, listen-to-me-I’m-so-smart speeches.
In the end I felt like John Green wrote this book just so he could prove he could make people cry. The book hardly spoke to me or moved me. It was so unrealistic that I didn’t shed one tear and I’d happily give the book away to whoever would like to read it.
Thank you for sharing your unique perspective on the book; I’m sure it was very different reading it as someone who knows about cancer and has watched someone go through the treatments. I hadn’t picked up much on the lack of details regarding the treatments as I was grossed out enough by what was in the novel regarding Augustus’ relapse.
I agree with you on the international travel; I was particularly annoyed that her mother let her go off on her own in a foreign country. Even though I was able to accept the “she should live her life” argument, that was pushing it. The rest was good enough (for me) that I overlooked it.
As for the romance. I actually enjoyed how downplayed it was and loved the smarty pants dialogue. The average and normal was what made it beautiful. While I love grand gestures, it’s nice to see a romance that develops slowly and naturally. It’s the same reason Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairy tale (ignoring the obvious kidnapping undertones). They had time to fall in love, spent time together in the real world playing video games and including friends. I guess I liked it because I’ve recently become burned out on the forced romance of shows like The Bachelor.
Thank you for commenting. It’s always nice to get both sides.
(Ermisenda responding) In my book review a few months ago, I also said how I disliked how he just asked her over to his place the day they met. And the mum was like, ‘sure’. I was like whaaaa? That seemed too fast.
The first review I read on this book pointed out the quote, “My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.” It’s been stuck in my craw ever since. I guess I need an education. I don’t get how you can “fathom” something into something else. 1.8288 meters at a time? After hours of fasting and praying to God and the FSM whilst staring at the definition of “fathom”, I’m pretty sure Green meant “fashion” (oops) and his editor missed it (oops). And there it is, the most popular quote on Google today (oops * 14,6M).
There were some others: “Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.” Um, no they aren’t. And love is making promises you don’t understand and keeping them anyway? I would need some serious context to swallow that one down. I could see how an audio book might make it easier to get past that stuff. The movie looks great.
✿
Seeing the progression of your reaction to the book is interesting, but I don’t know if it’s valuable, at least for this book. I like the book club discussion as long as it’s not too much of a spoiler. I think I mostly just appreciate your thoughts on stories when I read them. I might have to see this format for a plot or action driven novel to comment beyond that.
Thanks for your feedback on the styling. It’s only going to work when I’m able to write the review as I read. (Right now, I’m going back and writing reviews for books I finished in February (oops).)
“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.” Um, no they aren’t. And love is making promises you don’t understand and keeping them anyway? I would need some serious context to swallow that one down.
There was context in the book that explained it, but I’m not sure how well I could recap at this point. It was explained well enough that I could gloss over it even if it didn’t convince me. As you can see, I didn’t pick those quotes as ones I liked. 😉
The movie does look good. You can bet there will be a post about it once I see it, possibly in theaters.
Your oops cracked me up. I’ll look forward to the review!
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