From the Bookshelf of ~Can't Stop Reading~…

The Fault in Our Stars

John Green

Start date: April 1, 2014

Finish date: May 1, 2014

Discussion: Current Group Reads

Why we're reading this: Regular April group read.
[close] Regular April group read.

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What Members Thought

Feb 23, 2013 Sandra Heinzman rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, young-adult, sandi-k-s-2013-alphabet-challenge, book-club, 2012-gcabc

Wow, along with Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, it's the best book I've read this year, so far. I'm still processing it as I just finished it and my tears are close to the surface. This author can write (although he used a lot of words I didn't even know, lol)! As a cancer survivor myself, I guess it really hit home. I highly recommend this book and it would be a great book club read. ...more

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May 13, 2013 Sheenah Freitas rated it liked it

This novel has (as of this writing) 202,964 ratings on Goodreads with an average of 4.53 stars. Don’t know about you, but I would kill for that. This novel has also had many awards being thrown at. Many reviewers have confessed to bawling at the end. Others hail this as John Green’s greatest work to date. I, on the other hand, think differently.

The only other novel by John Green I have ever read is Looking for Alaska and that book left me completely and utterly raw at the end. I did not know how This novel has (as of this writing) 202,964 ratings on Goodreads with an average of 4.53 stars. Don’t know about you, but I would kill for that. This novel has also had many awards being thrown at. Many reviewers have confessed to bawling at the end. Others hail this as John Green’s greatest work to date. I, on the other hand, think differently.

The only other novel by John Green I have ever read is Looking for Alaska and that book left me completely and utterly raw at the end. I did not know how to feel because I felt like every single emotion was fighting for supremacy within me. I just was. Looking for Alaska remains to be one of my favorite novels of all time and a novel I like to tell other people to read. Judging by everyone’s reactions, I assumed this was going to be Looking for Alaska for me all over again, but it wasn’t; this book is inferior. It tries so hard to be superior, desperately clinging to every single tragedy it can and being philosophical, but regardless of Green’s eloquence and philosophical talk between two teenagers, it still comes up as inferior.

Don’t get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel. I consumed it. I screamed at it. I had some of the FEELS. I started reading it on Wednesday around 7 PM and finished it on Thursday at 9 PM. And that wasn’t marathon reading either; I mean, to say, I didn’t stop my life like I did with the Harry Potter novels. I still slept and ate and socialized and worked. But the pace of the book (I’m assuming because it has a lot of dialogue) is relatively fast and the next thing I knew I was halfway through it! I loved the characters and the way they were portrayed. They treated each other as if they had no disabilities or sickness and it reminded me of how Toph Beifong is treated in Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is really really great because they treat her like a normal person as if she had no disability whatsoever.

Because this novel is about cancer, (spoiler alert!) someone does die. And you grab this book, knowing that it’s a cancer book, knowing that because it’s a cancer book someone has to die and yet you cannot help but cling to this hope that everyone will make it out okay. That everyone will be. That death will not happen. But then you realize that you thinking that way is, essentially, a side effect of dying, because in the end everyone dies and there will be no one — not one person — who will remember you. I did get a little teary-eyed at the end and though I didn’t feel that same exact raw feeling I had when I read Looking for Alaska, it still got me thinking about life in general and what will become of us when we’re all dead and gone. And I think that’s part of the magic of this book. It makes you think and John Green deserves an award just for that because, quite frankly, there aren’t a lot of novels that do that anymore.

I think part of the reason I felt this novel lacked a bit is because it’s trying to be so much more than it is. You have two, uber intellectual teenagers going through cancer with one who only has one leg. They have this huge vocabulary (and I have no idea how many teens actually talk like that) and they talk about life and death as I like to imagine the great Greek philosophers thought about life and death. Because they have cancer, I’m sure they’re more acutely aware of life and death and think about it more often than the average healthy person. But I knew (and here’s my fatal flaw) that Green could do better than that. I knew he could squeeze out his message without all the dialogue. I wanted to see more fight or passion or something from Hazel and Augustus. Though this is told in the first person, I felt like Hazel was missing some sort of spark. Like I wasn’t feeling everything she was feeling or something. And though I think the sex scene was handled nicely, I think that was a moment where Green could’ve really amped up some feelings in there, just as he did in the make-out scene in Looking for Alaska — passionate, lovely, beautiful. ...more

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Dec 29, 2012 Lauren rated it it was amazing

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am not a particularly emotional person. That is until it comes to books and movies. I would prefer that no one ever saw me cry about myself but when it is about someone else I am an emotional wreck. Especially if said person is a fictional character.

This novel DESTROYED me. In the middle of reading an excellent tome this caught my eye so I set down said tome and started this one. 2/3 of the way through this short novel later I was over an hour late to meet ...more

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Jun 10, 2014 Jen Holmes rated it really liked it

A true novel. Well planned, flows, good character development (although not exceptional, in many ways the two lead characters were so similar it was hard to tell them apart, particularly when then had banter going on), many symbols and little snippets that give the reader a mini-education of some moral or philosophical concept, or the fabric of humanity. Cried for 2 hours while reading the last chapters, and about 30 mins after. Recommended, although I did prefer Me Before You by Jojo Moyles mor ...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Awo rated it it was amazing

Shelves: faves-of-all-time

warning: do not read this novel in the company of your family. Reading this novel WILL lead red, teary eyes, and uncontrollable sobs, which will then lead to humiliation, and unwanted attempts of comforting.

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