The Fault in Our Stars in Pick-a-Shelf

Feb 05, 2014 Erin Ashley rated it it was amazing

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Sheer curiosity is what got me to read this book. I kept seeing all the hype and the quotes and then it is going to be a movie now, so I thought I should give it a read, seeing as how the movie trailer intrigued me, and after reading the book I realised that the trailer didn't give anything major away. In a way I wish it had cause then it could have spared me THE GODDAMN HEARTBREAK FROM READING THIS BOOK!

So, to review this book is one I find hard because I gave a 5 star rating to a book about ca Sheer curiosity is what got me to read this book. I kept seeing all the hype and the quotes and then it is going to be a movie now, so I thought I should give it a read, seeing as how the movie trailer intrigued me, and after reading the book I realised that the trailer didn't give anything major away. In a way I wish it had cause then it could have spared me THE GODDAMN HEARTBREAK FROM READING THIS BOOK!

So, to review this book is one I find hard because I gave a 5 star rating to a book about cancer. Yepp, feels strange to say that a cancer book is worthy of 5 stars but in all honesty it isn't really about that at all. I mean, being sick in this book is a huge focus, don't get me wrong, but these characters face the world the only way they can. These are the cards they have been dealt, they know their lives suck in terms of how long they get to be alive but they make it count and they make it not about dying.

If there is only one fault I could possibly give this book, besides killing one of the best fictional characters I have ever read about, it is that sometimes the way these kids talked was so damn pretentious. I get it coming from Van Houten, but these are teenagers who appear to have swallowed a dictionary and various other literature and spew it up on a daily basis. At times they just did not seem plausable as actual teenage human beings to me, I barely know many adults who talk with this much wisdom and words that I have to sound out out loud and google the meaning of. Maybe that says something about me, I don't know or care for that matter, all I know is that even though these kids seemed this way to me, in the end they really are just those type of people. They are smart and wise and clever because they just are. They have seen too much bad in the world already that it must be hard not to want to know more, be more and say more. So, I guess I can get over the way they talk, because in the end it is just the way they are. I've probably been reading too many stories with stupid teenagers in them.

There really is a lot I can say I love about this book but if you read it you will see just what everyone else, and now I, are loving about this book. Hazel and Augustus are two characters who have left an impression on me, not to mention Issac also. They all overcome so much and then deal with so much and really, it isn't fair, but they know that and yet they go on with life anyway. It is inspiring and without being all cheesy with my words, but it does make you see that whatever normal life you are living, it could always be wayyyyy worse.

I 100% recommend reading this book, but I will leave my recommendation with a warning: have tissues on standby and know that your heart will break for these fictional characters. ...more

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Apr 24, 2013 Christina's Book Chronicles rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, young-adult, fiction, read-in-2015, missing, 00-check-me, 00-project22, 2025-sort

For a young adult book it was a good story, and therefore a quick read. I knocked it out in under 24 hours. It was easy to get attached to the characters. As someone who grew up with an uncle with Cystic Fibrosis, knowing he was going to die, just not when, this story was closer to home for me. He was 21 when he passed, (my aunt died from the same thing at 9,) and I know he tended to get into trouble, mostly because, he knew he had limited days so "why not?' I enjoyed reading a story from the pe ...more

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