Do not read this book. Not if you don’t want to have your heart broken and shattered to million pieces, your eyes swollen with tears and your throat choking down in your sadness. But other than that, this is a great book.
I knew a person who lost a family member to cancer, after a long battle. He was my best friend. He stopped being my best friend after that; he changed, became someone I didn’t know, someone I couldn’t stay by his side, or I was in serious danger of breaking apart and losing my mind, maybe even hurting myself.
So, I may not know how it feels to lose someone directly to cancer (and I pray every day I never will), but I do know how it feels to lose someone to cancer, because I lost him. That’s why, this book scared me. Scared me shitless (forgive my words).
I wasn’t sure I was ready to read it, to read of cancer, to live it through the book and to lose people through the book, because in a book about cancer, you can’t expect everyone to be fine and happy. You know whatever Happily-Ever-After you’ll get—IF you get it—will not be perfect. It will not be for forever, because even if the character doesn’t die in the time span of the book, she’ll die after. And at least for me, who get sucked into books, that matters.
But when I found it on a shelf in a bookstore, I decided to get it. So many friends of mine read and loved it. I even started it the very same day, before I could chicken out.
This book was filled with good surprises and bad surprises; Most of the book was unbelievably funny, which is about the last thing I expected. I thought more along the lines of “sad and depressing” (and there was plenty of that, but even more hilarious moments).
And the characters were stunning.
And the heartbreak came from an unexpected direction, and the ending did nothing to help that.
But, let’s rewind a little bit and start again…
Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, 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 of free time to thinking about death.
--First paragraph of The Fault in Our Stars
I love Hazel, and her story-telling voice. She was just so funny and hilarious, realistic and yet also a bit of dreamy in the way she was attached to the characters in a book and had to know what happens to them. Also, she’s deep. The things she says sometimes are like… whoa.
It’s amazing how the thing that sticks in your mind the most is how funny she is, when she’s a terminal cancer patient. There lies the genius of John Green, in my opinion.
The quote I remember most in the book, because I laughed so hard my stomach hurt, is this one:
“I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.)”
Augustus is the guy that takes Hazel out of her secluded shell. He’s kind of amazing; he’s funny and charming and hot, he knows what it’s like to be sick and he isn’t afraid to go after what he wants. He does everything in his powers, and I do mean everything, to make Hazel fall for him and make her dreams come true. I don’t think there is a single person in the whole wide world who won’t want a guy like him as her boyfriend.
The romance… well, good thing this book, for me, is so much more that a romance story – or I would’ve been forced to lower the start. For me, I felt like they fell in love way to fast (especially on Gus’s side), and did the “deed” much too quickly from the moment of accepting their feelings. I can understand that, I guess, because she’s sick and all—but for me those kind of stuff always grate on the nerves.
Aside for that, though, I love the content of their relationship; their banter and their talks and their deep conversations and the ways they seem to fit with each other and all that jazz. It was really quite remarkable. I wish it would’ve just stay like that, and save me the heartbreak.
Now comes the crying part.
I think it was maybe 75/80% into the book when everything kind of crumbled to pieces. I won’t tell you exactly what happens. You’ll have to read for yourself.
All I will say is that the heartbreaking part come from a place I didn’t see coming. It’s not that John Green didn’t leave hints. While writing this review, I suddenly noticed all the hints he gave us as to what to come. I just didn’t see them while reading. Maybe I didn’t want to see them.
All I will tell you is that it will make you finish rolls of tissue and that your eyes will get puffy and you’ll scream at the world WHY!? And then wonder where John Green lives so you can convince him to re-write the whole thing and mend your heart together.
If anyone actually want to talk to me about the whole thing—rant together with me, cry together with me, and all that—I’ll be happy to do so on my Goodreads version of this review, where I can put spoiler tags.
And if all that heartbreak wasn’t enough, there’s the letter at the end…
I know friends who told me they were heartbroken but didn’t regret reading this book. I do regret it, somehow. It hurt so much to read this book, even more so because it’s so funny, you forget the inevitable pain is going to come.
But it’s a good book. That I can say.
For this review and more, pop by my blog - Drugs Called Books