The Fault in our Stars by John Green

5 stars

"Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you,"

I am loving my month of rereads so far, I'd forgotten so much. There are so many people who complain about John Green and I will admit I have a few bones to pick with him but people complained so much so, I adopted their opinions. Which is one of my hamartias (fatal flaw), I am so easily influenced by the opinions of others. So, when I read this again I wasn't expecting much. I knew I loved it when I was 13 but I don't always trust my 13 year old self's judgement. This book though, is a gem. An absolute gem.

For starters, it is so pretentious but it's supposed to be. Augustus is supposed to be a pretentious character. That's how it's written and you'll notice most of John Green's novel come off very pretentious. I could pull out about a thousand pretentious but surprisingly accurate quotes and I would except the list would go on and on. When I was 13, all the pretentiousness made me feel like I knew the world. It made me feel like I was in on some little secret, it also made me slightly angsty and I went through a short teenage angst period shortly after reading this. I thought no one would ever understand me because of this book, luckily for you and everyone around me, I have not experienced that this time around.

Hazel and Augustus have very witty and amusing conversations that make me want to grow my vocabulary even more. It's very enjoyable to read, I love when characters have that sort of ease with each other. I also love the way Hazel narrates her story with metaphors and analogies, I've always loved analogies and metaphors. I even tend to narrate my life like that in my head. I think it's all very clever.

I always adore the bluntness of this book, I've always been fairly blunt about death which is odd for a girl who romanticises everything else in her life. I also realised that I developed some of my views on death from the book and I think my bluntness about death probably does stem from this book. For example when Hazel said funerals are for the living, it stayed with me and I didn't even realise where I'd gotten it until I read that part again. A lot of it has actually stayed with me, it's an incredible book. I've just always loved how real and raw this book is.

It, of course, is tremendously sad but it's how it is. If it were a happy ending, the book wouldn't have made the same amount of sense, if you get what I mean. It makes me cry so hard, like actually ugly cry. Which is saying something because not often will a book make me ugly cry, cry sure but not ugly cry. I can't imagine how horrible and I hope I don't ever have to find out nor anyone else.

Such an incredible book that you need to read and if you've already read it then, reread it because like me I'm sure you've forgotten how good it was. So beautiful, so raw, so thought provoking.