The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

When I first read “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green, I obviously fell in love straight away just like everyone else who’s read it. It was the first John Green book I’d ever read and has inspired me to want to go on and read all of his other books.

“The Fault in Our Stars” is essentially about some older teenage kids with cancer, although I like to think that it isn’t a cancer book: that it is more about love, life, death and metaphors instead, which John Green has managed to deal with using a lot of wit, humour and intelligence. It begins when Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 17-year-old girl with lung cancer in America, who narrates the book is made to go to a support group with other kids with cancer as her mother believes that she has depression, although Hazel likes to think that depression is just a side effect of dying, just like cancer. At this support group, Hazel meets Augustus Waters who changes the whole course of her future as they become friends and share in their love for Hazel’s favourite book. This change, I like to think, was for the better.

I won’t tell you any more about the plot of the book in case you haven’t read it yet, which I highly recommend that you do, as it has become one of my favourite books. But I will just tell you that every time I read this book, I eventually burst into tears - which are both sad and happy - no matter what. John Green has written about the delicate topics of terminal illness and death in such a the inspirational and clever way which provokes further thought about the topics involved in the book and emotions, from loud awkward laughs when you’re trying to keep quiet to silent sobs into your bedsheets too late at night.

There are many quotes featured in the book which I absolutely love; I love it when you read a book which is filled with quotes that relate to your average life as well as the stand-out special lives of the characters in the book. Hazel’s dad has a belief which he shares with us at the beginning of the book that “the universe wants to be noticed”. I really like how true this quote rings with the world and that we are such a small and insignificant population in comparison to the expanse of the unexplored universe. “Some infinities are bigger than other infinities”: another of my favourite quotes which refer to the length of time which we get to spend doing things or being with people. It is the idea that numbers are infinite in decimal form, therefore, does that mean if you spend one second doing something is that simply a short infinity compared to one infinite hour.

I would definitely give this book full marks for any criteria and recommend it to anyone who it looking for an emotional roller coaster of a read.

(used for an application to the FLY Media Team at UEA)