A Fault in Our Stars by John Green

This book has been recommended endlessly to me and I thought I would read to see what the fuss was about. I can't convey to you my attachment to this book. It took me a day and a half to read and within the first chapter I fell in love- not with just the characters but the style of writing. 
John Green's style of writing isn't predictable nor cheesy but a subtle journey and you don't realise until the end of the book that you need to come back to reality.

It is a cancer story within a love story, magnificently executed. AND... as if you haven't figured out already, I'm in love with this book.

This is my favourite quote as it uncovers the raw truth to a world unable to accept
it and I like that he aimed to show us what we hope to do before eventually dying.

Blurb:
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has brought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist names Augustus Waters suddenly suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.      

Hazel, a sixteen year old with stage four thyroid cancer “with an impressive and long-settled satellite colony” in her lungs. Thanks to a drug treatment she calls “the Miracle” Hazel’s cancer has been kept from spreading further. When she leaves the house, Hazel has to wheel a cart bearing an oxygen tank attached to a cannula, a tube that delivers oxygen to her nose.

Hazel doesn’t leave the house much, though. Instead she spends a lot of time in bed, and ponders death, so her mother decides she’s depressed. Hazel doesn’t really disagree (“Depression is a side effect of dying,” she states) but she doesn’t particularly want to do anything about it, especially not the thing her mother wants her to do – attend a support group for teens with cancer. Here’s Hazel’s irreverent description of the support group:

This Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of dying.

The Support Group, of course, was depressing as hell. It met every Wednesday in the basement of a stone-walled Episcopal church shaped like a cross. We all sat in a circle right in the middle of the cross, where the two boards would have met, where the heart of Jesus would have been.

I noticed his because Patrick, the Support Group Leader and the only person over eighteen in the room, talked about the heart of Jesus every freaking meeting, all about how we, as young cancer survivors, were sitting right in Christ’s very sacred heart and whatever.

So here’s how it went in God’s heart: The six or seven or ten of us walked/wheeled in, grazed at a decrepit selection of cookies and lemonade, sat down in the Circle of Trust, and listened to Patrick recount for the thousandth time his depressingly miserable life story—how he had cancer in his balls and they thought he was going to die but he didn’t die and now here he is, a full-grown adult in a church basement in the 137th nicest city in America, divorced, addicted to video games, mostly friendless, eking out a meager living by exploiting his cancertastic past, slowly working his way toward a master’s degree that will not improve his career prospects, waiting, as we all do, for the sword of Damocles to give him the relief that he escaped lo those many years ago when cancer took both his nuts but spared what only the most generous soul would call his life.

AND YOU TOO MIGHT BE SO LUCKY!

So Hazel doesn’t want to go, but her mother insists. Hazel caves “for the same reason that I’d once allowed nurses with a mere eighteen months of graduate education to poison me with exotically named chemicals: I wanted to make my parents happy. There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you’re sixteen, and that’s having a kid who bites it from cancer.”

Hazel has one friend in support group, Isaac, who lost an eye to cancer. Isaac brings a friend to support group with him, Augustus Waters. Augustus has a prosthetic leg, also thanks to cancer — in his case, osteosarcoma. But he has been cancer free for years, and he comes to support group mostly to give Isaac company.

Augustus is hot-looking and he cannot take his eyes off of Hazel. He and Hazel are both witty and clever, as well as quirky, so they quickly connect.

Augustus invites Hazel to his house to watch “V for Vendetta,” and soon the two them exchange their favorite books. Hazel’s favorite book in the world is An Imperial Affliction, a book about a teen with cancer, but one which eludes all the usual cancer novel clichés. She has read the book countless times and is a bit nervous about sharing it with Augustus, but he gets the book in the same way she does.

And then Augustus does something magical: he manages to get in touch with the book’s reclusive author. An Imperial Affliction, which is written in a journal format, ends in mid-sentence, indicating the narrator has died. But other threads of the story are left untied, and Hazel desperately wants to know what happened to the heroine’s mother after the heroine’s death. 

This uncovers a whole range of adventures...

BUT AS ALWAYS I'VE SAID TOO MUCH. THIS PLOT IS JUST THE START OF WHAT IS TO COME. ONLY IF YOU READ THE BOOK YOU WILL UNDERSTAND. THERE ARE UPS AND MANY DOWNS BUT JOHN GREEN NEVER CEASES TO KEEP YOU INTERESTED WITH HIS WITTY AND DEEP MEANINGFUL NARRATIVE.

Hazel refers to herself as a 'grenade'

Augustus' and Hazel's version of 'Always'

 Without a doubt I would give it a 5/5. It was breath-takingly brilliant. It was insightful and a joy to read with fast pace and it wasn't too melodramatic.

I’ve quoted a lot from The Fault in Our Stars in this review, because I liked the witty narration so much and wanted others to get a feel for it, and for Hazel’s character. Augustus is equally appealing, clever and funny. For me this was (obviously) a strength of the novel, but also (perhaps less obviously) a weakness, because there were times when Hazel and Augustus sounded smarter than any sixteen year old I've ever met.

Not only that but even the side characters sometimes shared this preternatural cleverness. As much as I liked Hazel and Augustus, and found them charismatic, I also felt I could see the author’s hand behind these characters, and others in the novel. 

 But one last piece of advice...
YOU MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST READ THIS BOOK.
NOW.
OR ELSE. 

 John Green's website:
http://johngreenbooks.com/

Other books include:

Paper Towns
Looking for Alaska
An abundance of Katherines
Will Grayson, Will Grayson

John Green is also a Youtuber and one half of the Vlogbrothers.
NERDFIGHTERS!

Song about the book:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dVVcL-X1pc

Fan Trailer- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cv5RSQ5ADc