The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

It wasn't Hazel's idea to attend the support group. Her mom thought it would be a good idea for her to get out of the house and spend some time with other kids where were living with their cancer diagnoses. Hazel's on a new experimental drug that's bought her some time from her terminal disease, but her lungs are pretty much shot and she carries oxygen with her wherever she goes. She wasn't expecting to meet Augustus Waters at the support group, a tall and gorgeous survivor with 1.4 legs who talks and lives in metaphors. Hazel wants to spend time with him, but as they grow closer she can't stand the thought that one day she will die and he will be left behind.

This, I think, is my favourite John Green novel, overtaking the previous favourite Looking for Alaska. With an outer coating of teenage romance, underneath it deals with questions of guilt and responsibility, love and obligation, and life and death. Hazel wants to minimize the effect that her death will have on the world, so she hides away so that people won't be too sad when she dies. Augustus wants to make a difference in the world, live a meaningful life that people will point to after he's gone. They're both searching for answers from the world, a world that pretty much screwed them over, health-wise. Hazel, in her search for answers, has fixated on an ambiguous novel and is desperate to know what happens to the characters in the end. While I at times grew frustrated with her insistence that something happened to fictional characters after the book has ended, I realized that this child-like approach speaks to her own uncertain life and what happens once it has ended. I don't know if this counts as a spoiler or not, but I was not always dry-eyed while reading this book.

John Green is online. You should check it out.

This is John talking about signing all pre-ordered copies of the book:

Find it at IndieBound. 

Read it with:
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Wonder by RJ Palacio
Six Months to Live by Lurlene McDaniel