The Fault in Our Stars. . . I feel like I may offend some people with this review, but I’m just being honest. So! To be honest. . . not really what I was hoping for. All of my peers seem to be obsessed with this book, this story, and while I enjoyed it and am planning to see the movie, I’m definitely not obsessed.
NOTE: I love John Green; when I figured out who he actually was (connecting him with his YouTube self), it made me so happy. And I think he’s a pretty good writer.
So, all of my contemporaries are (if you’ll pardon the semi-pun) “star-struck” with this book, and I can see why; teen romance. Awesome. Two teenagers facing extremely difficult circumstances fall in love and love each other despite the odds, which are not in their favor (yes, that was most definitely a Hunger Games reference. . . I have teen literature on the brain). But the whole “I-have-cancer-but-fell-in-true-love-with-my-teenage-soul-mate-then-someone-died” story is a bit. . . predictable; I guessed who died and who lived after watching the trailer one or two times.
Another thing that bothers me about books like this (books about teenagers in an extraordinary and difficult but believable situation) is that they all seem to go off on tangents about the universe and oblivion or other such “deep” things. To me, though, they’re not that deep. They come across to me as an attempt to be deep. But maybe that’s just because I’m not a particularly deep person, or I would rather read an extremely climatic fantasy/science fiction book, or a combination of the two.
If you’re reading this review to find out whether or not you should read the book, just do it. Develop your own opinion; I shouldn’t be the one to tell you what you should do (just remember that just because everyone else thinks it’s awesome, it isn’t always necessarily awesome, whatever it may be). I do think it would be worth reading, if not to understand the “deep” things Green is talking about, then to understand what all your friends are talking about. Plus (and this is especially for the hopeless romantics), there’s a hot guy in it who loves a beautiful girl, and the beautiful girl loves the hot boy back, despite the fact that they both have terminal illnesses and one of them (*cough cough* no spoiler alerts here!) dies in the end.
So go, people. Read it. Find out what all the hullabaloo is about, and maybe I’ll see you at the movie theater. ;)