The Fault In Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars

By: Emily LeSueur

Being a teen is filled with enough angst as it is. Throw cancer and true love into the mix and you’ve got a plot that has sent teens running to the nearest bookstore. The Fault in Our Stars by the award winning author John Green is about the continuous struggles she faces from failing organs to wanting nothing more than to be an average teenage girl.     

Fighting thyroid cancer since she was 13, her days are numbered. The only reason she is still alive is because of an experimental drug. Thinking her life is coming to an end, she attends a support group for  kids with cancer… and her fairytale love story begins. But don’t you worry: this is not the average, sappy love story.

Augustus Waters is almost too good to be true. He’s good looking, sweet and  is a former basketball player who has lost his leg to osteosarcoma. The two have an instantaneous connection, and soon fall in love. In books, love at first sight can be a reality, but what Augustus and Hazel have is special.  Not everyone can understand what it’s like to be a kid battling cancer, so it is like fate when the two of them met.

The two teenagers  go on many adventures, with Hazel’s oxygen tank in tow, trying to make the most of the time they have left together including a trip across the world. Augustus wants nothing more than to give Hazel everything she’s ever wanted, until a twist in fate comes their way. This  leaves their world of love and happiness turned up side down.  

Green does an amazing narration of the ups and downs of these two teen’s lives  and the ups and downs of being a kid with cancer. He will leave you in tears at times from some events, but also in uncontrollable laughter at others from the way he portrays the characters’ subtle humour.  As he portrays the two characters, they are just average teenagers, but with a time limit on this earth. The two’s biggest struggle is not their cancer diagnoses, but how they will allow  their stories to be laid out, and who will be in their stories. The two teens have the choice to put each other in their lives, but they seem to have no regrets,  As Augustus puts it, “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.”

The Fault in Our Stars reached the New York times best-seller list, and has incredible ratings. The book attained so much attention that a movie based with Shailene Woodley and Ansel  Elgort making the love story of Hazel and Augustus come to life will be released in theaters June 6th.