Many Young Adult novels are full of clichés and are redundant with their boy-meet-girl plotlines. Although it almost always happens, it is not always a bad thing, case and point, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.
In this novel, Green, the award-winning author of Looking for Alaska, tells a heart-wrenching tale of a girl, Hazel Lancaster, with Stage IV Thyroid cancer, and her life changing love affair with Augustus Waters. The plot truly gets the readers thinking, causing them to formulate questions no one can answer– when I die, will anyone remember me? Have I made my life worth living? Will anyone love me?
The beauty in The Fault in Our Stars is that it feels real. It is not just another story about teens and cancer. The connection created between the text and the reader is personal. The emotions the story brings out from the reader are sincere and raw—powerful and incredibly touching.
The characters are Green’s usual type, wonderfully written, though incredibly sad. Each shares certain intelligence, wit, and humor in that Hazel, a somewhat cynical yet hopeful girl, pairs perfectly with Augustus, a romantic, pretentious and insightful soul.
The book is a combination of themes with different levels of depth, all interlaced together in a story of two kids who fall in love. And although all of Green’s books follow a framework, he still makes the character’s pain isnfresh and felt.
The Fault in Our Stars is beautiful and absolutely brilliant. It displays John Green at his finest, leaving the readers with a reaction that could be described in a phrase he wrote himself, “My thoughts are stars I can not fathom into constellations”.
