So everyone has been raving about this. They have cried buckets and buckets of salty tears, voted it best sad book ever, the book of the year, the most touching cancer story, the soon to be movie everyone is looking forward to.

Except me.

I am in the miniscule minority since everyone's been rating it five stars on Goodreads, and seen a few four stars. I am one of the handful that has rated it two. And this is why.

I may mention some spoilers, so read the review at your own risk.





Yes. The Fault in our Stars. It is about this terminally ill girl with cancer that meets this previously terminally ill boy in a cancer support group. Essentially, it's boy meets girl, boy likes girl, girl is playing hard to get, girl eventually likes boy back, boy's cancer comes back and he dies. The end.

I am seriously not kidding. That was how it went, that was how it ended.

This is the first John Green book I have read, and I don't know how his works go in terms of character and plots and stuff,  so I can't really say much. I liked his character development and his way of writing. I mean, for a teen novel, it wasn't written in a sort of dummyfied way, wherein it's too simplified and straight to the point that often results in a boring, nondescript book for teenagers. But it was easy for me to picture and walk around the story with Hazel and Augustus, even Isaac and Hazel's parents.

But in terms of plot and just the whole general idea of the book, it kind of fell flat for me. I don't know if the author was trying to accomplish being humorous, witty, charming, sad, or romantic. Or all. There's little tidbits of each but nothing really shines through or really gets at me. A book that's like a Jack of all trades, master of none. I know people would say that it's really sad, how Augustus died and blahbitty blah, but... I didn't cry. It didn't tug at my heartstrings at all.

There wasn't enough chemistry to glue them together, that to separate them would require a molecular level of separation that would really tear a reader apart.

Also, another thing was that the characters were a little too... un-teenagerish in the way the talk or their general outlook on life. They are a little too wise beyond their years. Cancer does that to you, I guess, or facing death. For older people, that would be normal, but for a teenager to be a little too mature? Not realistic, even if you lived with cancer. The picture was painted with a heavy hand, and I find that the characters were a little rigid. Borderline unbelievable that a teenager in this day and age of Nicki Minaj and twerking Miley Cyrus would talk like a poet. It's like the author built the character in his likeness, but no teenagers talk like that. Ever. There may be a small percentage, but that's as rare as Hollywood virginity. That being said, though, I found the book really quotable, (as I'm sure everyone has already been quoting) but I particularly liked