The Fault in our Stars…

This is a compensated review and the opinions in it are completely my own and not meant to be reflected upon Blogher… 

The Fault in our Stars is the latest Blogher book club book. It is authored by best selling YA author John Green. The story is written from the perspective of Hazel, sixteen years old and dealing with terminal cancer. While the rest of the reading world around me seemed already familiar with Green’s work, this book was my introduction into his writing and it was going up against a hard critic. First of all, I am difficult to convince that a man can write a girl’s personal narrative, but a terminally ill sixteen year old girl’s narration? I was pretty sure it wasn’t possible… 

Let me tell you, it is. Putting pen to paper is apparently something magical when in the hands of John Green. Again, I feel I am one of the last people on the planet to learn this fact- and for that I am both incredibly sad and truly grateful. Grateful because, of course, he has other books. 

Books, which I cannot wait to devour. 

The character of Hazel balances so eloquently between the normal thoughts and feelings of any sixteen year old girl, and what must be the honest thoughts of one dying so young. I can not say for sure, while I have been sixteen, I have never been at death’s door, but with every confessed thought of Hazel’s I felt myself imagining it would be exactly that same way. 

In a situation which feels suffocatingly sad and altogether hopeless, he manages to bring together a story full of raw love, pure adventure and some of the most honest writing I have read in quite some time. 

Moving. 

Magical. 

READ. THIS. BOOK… 

One really cool aspect of the book is that while the reader is falling in love with the character of Hazel, Hazel is obsessing over her own favorite book, ironically about a young girl with terminal cancer. The book changes and shapes her life in completely unpredictable ways, as I imagine The Fault in our Stars is sure to do.  There is a discussion over at the book club about books we love, and it would be great if you wanted to chime in.