By: Linda M. Crate

Let me just say here and now that I loved John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars lest you get the crazy idea while reading this review that I do not. I can definitely say without a shadow of a doubt that I understand why it’s hailed as one of the best fiction books of 2014. If you have not read this book then turn around right now. There are going to be spoilers, and I would hate to spoil this for you. It is one of those must reads, but I want you to form your own opinions before reading mine.

You may or may not agree, and that’s okay. That’s the beauty of the world. You can have an opinion and I can have an opinion that may differ, and yet in the end neither of us are really wrong we just think different things. Despite what anyone might tell you an opinion cannot be wrong because it’s how you feel about something deep in your heart. Even if I don’t agree with it or a thousand other people don’t agree with it doesn’t make it incorrect.
Now on to my review.

The Fault In Our Stars is probably the best and yet the worst love story I have ever read in my entire life. Comparable to the likes of my favorite novels Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. I love it, but not in a way that is comparable to my love for Harry Potter or Auralia’s Colors or Of Mice and Men. I love it and yet it could never be compared with one of those books because they’re all lovely in their own ways and so is Green’s novel.

I love it because it’s so very real, the characters are so relatable, and you kind-of wish this were a real love story and yet the part of you that hates this story is so glad it’s not because that’s just too painful to consider.

I really don’t know what made me pick it up. I think I was just curious because I had heard about the movie. It wasn’t as if the cover were compelling or it screamed read me. I normally hate romance novels, but this one I could stomach and I’d like it so much more if it ended the way a “fair” book woudl end but this book is anything but fair.

It’s a roller coaster of emotions.

My favorite quote comes on page 153 and is as follows: “I am,” he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. “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 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.” Goodness! If anyone ever said something like that to me, I think I might have to marry that man. Augustus Waters is amazingly intelligent and yet Hazel Grace is smarter even still. At some points you forget that they’re even teenagers until they throw around the idea of school and attending it, their friend and his howling over unrequited love, and just some of their reactions to things. Yet at the same time you cannot forget because it feels so real and you just want to sit in Augustus Waters house and hear him talk to Hazel because you know it will be the most amazing thing in the world to see those two together.

I knew when I set out this review there were a thousand things I was going to forget while writing it because there is so much to absorb in this book. So much to learn. I love it for the same reasons that I hate it. It is beautiful. It is poignant. It is unfair. It is so raw and so real and lovely that I could not put it down.

Their romance is doomed from the start and you know that. But you just hope that the cancer is cured in both of them and you don’t care how because you love Hazel and you love Augustus and their romance is so mangificent that you don’t want it to end. It just can’t end, it’s just not fair. Yet it does end and in the most painful way and you force yourself to keep reading despite the tears and find it becomes even more gorgeous in all of it’s sorrow. Then there’s another part of you that kind-of hates John Green because their romance was so real, so raw and one of those romances that you know would last forever if they had gotten their chance. You want it, too, because it’s a young romance that is not a puppy love and it never could be. Because they are both kind, selfless people in their own ways and it makes so much sense for them to be together and you don’t want them to be ripped apart.

There is so much wit in this that it literally made me laugh out loud, and after some of my silent tears streaked down my face it merely made me smile because it was so very bittersweet. In my head Augustus and Hazel meet again in an afterlife (that neither of them are sure exist) and their love does last forever because I literally could not take it if that were not the case. If it’s not, don’t tell me, John Green, because I don’t know if I could forgive you for that. I have already forgiven you for breaking my heart.

Before anyone corrects me on the use of literally, I do mean it sincerely.

One of the reasons I love this book is because it reinforces things that everyone tells you about love, but it isn’t upfront and obnoxious about it. 1) Love transcends death, 2) True love is magical, whimsical, and about as attainable as catching a live star; 3) When you do catch said true love it’s both beautiful and tragic because one day it has to end whether you have cancer or not.

So there you have it, and if you have not read it yet, and got through this review know that I’m thoroughly annoyed with you. Yet I realize it’s in human nature to do exactly what you were told not to do so I can’t say I’m entirely too surprised, and I hope that I didn’t ruin the book for you. For those of you that have read it I’m sure you’ll agree. Or maybe you won’t. Because the world is full of people with different opinions and that’s okay. However, just know that the critic that said this book was near genius was full of crap. It is genius, and I hope to God one day I’ll find a love like Hazel and Augustus but that we’ll both live. Even if that’s selfish because I really don’t want to die. Even though, I know, one day it’s inevitable.