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

Jun 29, 2012 Madel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-2013, audiobook

"Without pain, we couldn't know joy." My heart burst after reading this delicate book. I was so scared to read this, because I know this is a poignant book. I want to bury the pain I am feeling right now, deep inside my heart. I want to write my own Fault in Our Stars with a good ending. Where Both Augustus and Hazel are alive and happy in love. But we can't always have what we want. Sometimes, we just have to accept the fact that there is something more beyond the sorrow of losing someone. Some ...more

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Nov 28, 2014 Vandhana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books_i_own

I think there was some fault while creating us! Seriously I think its unfair (not just with cancer but with all the deceases) I dont know whether we are blessed or cursed! even if many of us dont suffer like these people with some deadly decease, we do suffer in losing them :( I havent seen any cancer patient before reading this book but now I will say I lived with them through this book! Hazel and Gus gonna haunt me!

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Jan 18, 2013 Dierdra McGill rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult, authors-i-want-to-read-again, realistic-fiction

This book is one of those books that you more or less know what is going to happen before you even start reading the first page. Two people are going to fall in love and one of them is going to die and it will be really sad. It has been done so much in movies and books that I tend to avoid them because they just don't move me as much as everyone else it seems. This book through cancer into the mix, another reason for me to not read it because a book this widely loved if you don't like it for any ...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Sandra Heinzman rated it it was amazing

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