The Fault In Our Stars

I finished this book about half an hour ago, so it's still very fresh and there might be things here that may change when I look at things in perspective. I feel compelled to say, however, that this book is one of the best books I've ever read. I don't get to say that too often, so it is, as a friend would say, one hell of a book.

To briefly put you in situation, the book starts with a girl, Hazel Grace, who has suffered from cancer and still has sequels, her lungs suck at being lungs (quote) and she has to carry around an oxygen tank all the time. She’s depressed and the only activity she does is going to a Support Group for children with cancer, where they tell their experiences and pray for those who have passed away. That’s Hazel’s life until she meets Augustus Waters, a very charismatic and hot guy who also had suffered from cancer and has a prosthetic leg. And their romance commences.

But if that was it, the book wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is. This book does much more than that. It trespasses all our fears of death, all our clichés of children with cancer, all our prejudices of side effects of cancer. “Depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.” The book removes all our blinders from our eyes and offers us what we really seek when dying: to be remembered. We want to do something to the universe, to live and die for something, and we’re afraid of the oblivion.

The Fault In Our Stars is not a book of a teenagers dying from cancer. It isn't a love story of a young couple who know their lives will end too soon either. It's much more than that. It's a book that challenges our own fears of death, how we live every day and what we think it's most important in our lives. 

I cannot write a review that does justice to a great book like this one. So just buy it, grab a pack of tissues and a cup of tea/coffee, and be prepared to cry, feel and be changed forever.

“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”