The Fault In Our Stars Review

A heart-warming and heart-breaking novel, The Fault In Our Stars is definitely a tear jerker, for a multitude of reasons.

Written by the famed John Green, also known for titles such as Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable book, with incredibly endearing characters, from Hazel’s mother to Augustus Waters himself.

The book is based largely on another, made up book, An Imperial Affliction, and its author, Peter van Houten, both of which Augustus and Hazel almost revolve around, with quotes from the ‘book’ interspersed throughout their conversations.

One of the more prominent of these quotes is ‘pain demands to be felt’, and although it’s morbid, I quite like it. It kind of defines and personifies pain; it’s greedy, selfish and doesn’t care about others.

Pain has a massive part to play, with both emotional and physical agony running like a river throughout the book. Green allows readers to experience what it might be like to have cancer, and how it affects not only yourself, but those around you. There are advantages to being terminally ill, but also devastating disadvantages too. TFOIS portrays Hazel as a bit of a cynic with an almost dark sense of humour, but that’s why I love her character. She describes herself as having ‘a touch of cancer’, and makes light of her debilitating disease, but isn’t exactly mean with her humour.

I think the relationship that Hazel and Augustus develop is illustrated beautifully. Over the course of the book, they grow closer and closer, despite Hazel trying her best not to fall in love with Augustus, because of her terminal cancer. They have such an amazing understanding for each other, and illumine the others life. It’s almost a perfect love story. I mean, it would be, if it weren’t for the ‘touch of cancer’.

The tragic end had me in tears for the remainder of the book, and I then proceeded to (shamelessly) cry myself to sleep. But within the heartbreak, there is also a sliver of happiness to be found.