So I would like to try this new thing called Review Sundays, both giving me a boost to read more and to post regularly on the blog, so here the first review sunday.. and it's a great book to start with.. The Fault in Our Stars!
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.
What can I say, for those of you who have not yet stumbled across this book and hungrily absorbed each page, eager to reach an ending that will inevitably rip your heart out. You have not known what it is to laugh and cry and die on the inside in the way this book will make you.
The Fault in our Stars follows the life of Hazel, a sufferer of lung cancer who knows she doesn't have long to live. If I was to sum up Hazel's personality in one word, it would be real. Hazel is real, she's a teenager with all the sadness and distractions, but she's also mature; she understanding.. in so many ways that most people just aren't. She offers an insight into the life of people suffering from terminal illness and how that effects them, their lives and mostly their families. I felt I really connected with Hazel and her views on the world, death and love.
When Augustus first comes into her life he seems like a typical, charming teenage boy.. but the more time they spend together the more of Augustus we see. He is deep and knowing and completely in love with a girl who he knows he is going to lose.
Their story is the kind of beautiful that makes you feel like an abyss has opened up in your chest. Augustus and Hazel save each other with their love, even when it causes them such grief in the end.
"The thing about pain... it demands to be felt."
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this story, to appreciate your health, your family, being able to breathe.. but what I took from it was that, even though life beats you down in every way it can we have one thing that can save us, one thing that we live for, something that people take for granted or don't actually feel when they say they do; and that's love.
For avid readers especially this book will be perfect for you, because you'll be able to relate so well with the literate characters and their views/personalities. But in all honesty I know people who don't read books much and would recommend this to you in a heartbeat. John Green has created a story that will seep under your skin and remain there for a long time, he has shown us characters that we will never be able to un-know.
I'm trying not to give away any spoilers because this is the kind of book your don't want to understand the gist of from reading little snippets of information on the internet, especially little snippets of other peoples opinions, its the kind of book you want to sit inside with for a good long day and read cover to cover with a box of tissues at the ready and a heart that can survive a good breaking.
But I will show you my first reactions after finishing The Fault in our Stars:
Yep. The Fault in our Stars broke my heart.
But wow, John Green is a fricken empathetic genius
And I need like every other book of his right now
Like what can I read after reading The Fault in Our Stars.. it's just not gonna compare
I haven't read John Green's other books, but I feel like I need every single on of them right now, I would really love to hear your thoughts on The Fault in our Stars, and if you've read them your favourite of his other master pieces.
I think I'm going to say it.. my new favourite read. I don't usually feel like I would want to go back and re-read books when I know what happens, but I think this book will be read frequently and adored.
"It seemed like forever ago, like we've had this brief but still infinite forever. Some infinites are bigger than other infinites."
Next week's Review Sunday is for Breathe by Sarah Crossan
