Book reviews
By: Fallon Link
Some books can attach a reader to a character to an extent that the reader can feel that the character has flesh. Many authors cannot make a novel thrilling enough to make this possible. The Fault In Our Stars by John Green is one of these few books that can make a reader laugh at the hysterical parts and cry at the upsetting parts.
Sixteen-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster was diagnosed with lung cancer when she was thirteen and only lives because of the “tumor-shrinking miracle.” Hazel reads the same book over and over, which makes her life quite boring. That is until Augustus Waters, who has lost one of his legs due to cancer, joins her cancer support group along with his soon-to-be-blind friend, Isaac. Hazel and Augustus quickly bond over various books, one of them being a realistic fiction novel called An Imperial Affliction, which is about a girl named Anna who has brain cancer and tells the story from the first person point of view. Hazel describes the book as “not another one of those cancer books,” but a novel that tells the horrific truth about cancer. An Imperial Affliction ends in mid sentence, assuming that Anna has died or has become too sick to continue “writing” and the book does not have an epilogue telling what occurs to the other characters in the novel. Wanting to know what happens to these other characters, Augustus and Hazel travel to Amsterdam, where the author lives, to find out the real ending to the book since the writer, Peter Van Houten, has not replied to any of his fan mail and has invited Augustus and Hazel to Amsterdam through email to talk about the ending. At Amsterdam, Augustus and Hazel’s sick love story will form, but tragedy will strike and what they expected will not become a reality.
Personally, I believe The Fault In Our Stars is a phenomenal novel with stunning characters and a thrilling plot. Throughout the book, each sentence is crafted with brilliance, which easily rates this novel five out of five stars. If you like books with friendship, tragedy, and romance, read The Fault In Our Stars!
The Fault in Our Stars