Plot Synopsis: Sixteen year old Hazel is living with an incurable type of cancer. An experimental treatment has kept it from worsening, but Hazel's quality of life is hampered by requiring special breathing apparatuses and dwelling on the impact her inevitable death will have on her parents. When she attends a cancer support group, she meets newcomer Augustus Waters, a handsome, funny, all-American teenage boy. Together, they begin living each day like it's their last best day. Until it is.
Literary Analysis/Personal Reaction: Goodreads' readers gave this book a whopping 4.55 rating (260,000+ raters!) and this book has received some prestigious awards, too. The novel, written from Hazel's own point of view, is perfect for a teen audience. Correction: it is perfect for a FEMALE teen audience. Once again, I'm suckered into reading another book with a major cheese factor. There are two reasons why this book is so cheesy:
1. Augustus Waters likes to read. And he's sensitive to the feelings of others. Ugh. Really?! I'm tired of these unrealistic teenage boys marketed to teenage girls through popular adolescent literature. Like Four in Divergent or Peeta/Gale in The Hunger Games, we have a strong female lead who bends to the whims of these awkwardly sensitive boys. I'm all for romantic interests, but I expect them to be REALISTIC. A teenage boy like Augustus, who reads bloody, violent books, would NOT read (let alone re-read) Hazel's favorite book ("An Imperial Affliction"...the title alone would make any real boy run in the opposite direction). Secondly, Augustus goes out of his way to impress Hazel, but due to the fact that these actions are related to reading this book, it's unrealistic and....well...cringe-worthy.
2. The Fault in our Stars is another book where an author talks about their love of books vicariously through their protagonist. I don't want to read a book where every fucking protagonist is a bookworm who thinks glorious thoughts about writing and reading. I get it, John Green, you love books and you want some semblance of yourself in your characters. But as a reader, it's sickening, like watching a movie about characters making a movie. It's weird...annoying, even. The fact that half of this book focuses on cancer and the other half focuses on Hazel and Augustus' journey to discover what happens to characters in "An Imperial Affliction" is just ridiculous. Nobody cares about characters of a made-up book within the book they're reading.
My overall feeling about the novel is that it wouldn't have received so many awards and 5/5 star ratings if it weren't for the ending of the novel. I mean, it's a book about teens with cancer. As a reader, you do sympathize with the concerns of the characters: Hazel says she feels like a grenade ready to go off, that her parents live in fear every day and that at some point, she's going to die (BOOM!). Grab a pack of tissues and be prepared to cry as you read this book. You will almost enjoy the cheesy moments since during the other moments, you'll be crying. It's these intensely emotional, insightful sections that give the book its great ratings/awards. After readers have had a good cry at the cathartic, emotional conclusion to the story, I think they forget all about the awkwardness of the book as a whole. However, I look at the novel as a whole and I gotta say - the cheese factor really impacted my overall satisfaction with the story.
Final Rating: 6/10 - Insightful, easy prose, and an interesting subject make it an enjoyable read. However, the cheesy, unrealistic plot points and characters are nauseating and ruin some of the fun of this book.
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