The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

high school, cancer, true love, death

I think this sums it up.  

I'm not trying to say this is all the book is about.  But, ya know.  It's predictable and tragic, and lovely, all wrapped together in this best-seller book.  I was interested in the story line, but I felt like I was transported back to high school ... and maybe that's a good thing when reading a book like this?  I'm still trying to figure it out.  There were some good lines.  Here's the thing.  I liked the book.  It was fine.  But I'm struggling coming up with anything to say about it.  At all.  Maybe because before this I read A Wrinkle in Time.  I don't know.
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All right...I took some more time to think about it.  And, I did really like the book.  I mean, I must have because I didn't put it down.  I read until it was 2 hours past when I was trying to convince myself to just go to sleep.  So, here's the thing.  I like Hazel Grace.  She was a great character.  I liked her attitude.  I liked her spunk.  I liked her.  Augustus.  I liked him.  But not as much as Hazel.  The whole putting a cigarette in his mouth but not smoking it as a metaphor yadda yadda yadda.  I thought that was dumb.  But, see, when I read...I get really invested and really enter this world that the author creates.  So, I didn't think it was dumb of Green to write that, I thought it was dumb of Augustus...and if I were there, I would have told him that that is just way too dramatic.  I loved how Hazel wasn't friends with anyone there, but then, one day it just clicked.  Doesn't it happen like that?  All the time?  Marcus and I lived in the same apartment complex all year and I didn't even know it until I met his roommate.  And then, we clicked.  And got married.  Just like that.  So, there was something about how Hazel, Augustus, and Isaac all just were friends.  I really liked it.

It was entertaining, and I enjoyed that.  But the only real enduring thought that is still going through my mind after reading this is that I really never want to get cancer.  I want to avoid that.  Completely.  Don't want it.  So, yes, the book was good, but I didn't walk away feeling like something in my had changed...and I think I went in expecting that.

So, apparently this is going to be a movie.  I think it'll be a good one.  One that a lot of high school kids will like.  And if cast properly, the girls will swoon over Augustus.  And I think that's fitting, because it is a good story.

I am in the minority I know.  I read some other reviews, and people LOVE this book.  It is a best-seller after all, and I am just me.  So, who knows?