The Fault In Our Stars Review by Book Club Member Sam..

 

The Fault In Our Stars is a young adult novel that has sat on my shelf for a year or so. Again and again, I've picked it up and barely even a hundred pages in, I then put it down again for a month or two before I start to read it once again before putting it down yet again for another month or so!

I first brought this novel because the blurb sold it to me straight away, “Despite the tumour-shrinking medical miracle that has brought her a few years. Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.'

 

"Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them.” 

I know you don't need to say it. Straight away your heart goes out to these two kids with cancer and you want to read their story but then reading their story reaffirms what we already know, cancer must surely be one of the most difficult things to live with. And to read about Hazel, a girl who knows cancer will never leave her, left me with a lump in my throat from almost the very beginning and actually for a while there, made me very uncomfortable and almost guilty which is maybe why I had to stop and start this book over and over again.

"Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?" '

I finally finished The Fault In Our Stars last night after once again re-starting it about four days ago and this time after reaching the last page and putting the book down. I was truly sad not only for the story that was told but also that the time, between (and with) the friends who I felt as if I had met (IE. Augustus, Issac and Hazel) had come to an end. The relationship John Green established between these three characters was so amazing and you cannot imagine how their days would have been without each other. I can only hope that one day I will find friends as true as these, for as much as they couldn't, they made the terrible so much better.

 

'You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.'

I don't really want to tell you too much about this book because I don't want to go and give you all the spoilers but it is special and like me, you may take a few goes but please read until Amsterdam before you give up on The Fault In Our Stars. I'm not sure a story has ever taken me to a setting or situation that felt so real before. As I read about the dinner and then Augustus's confession, I smiled, cried and shivered.

This book starts as a book (maybe even a slightly uneasy one) but when it ends, you're left with the feeling that The Fault In Our Stars was so much more!!!

I enjoyed TFIOS more and more as the story progressed and shed a few tears towards the end. Some of the lines Green came up with are so poignant and that one about promises and not knowing what you mean when you make them but still keeping them. I think, that for me is the first time I've found a definition of love that I believe in and would like to live life by J I am hoping to read all of the John Green books. I read 'Looking for Alaska' and probably prefer it ever so slightly just because it was a bit easier to get in to. Maybe the hype for TFIOS made me expect a little too much too soon. However, like I said, I loved it in the end and done right, the film could be a fab Sunday afternoon weepie!!