Review: The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was so excited when my little brother got this book for me for my birthday. Multiple friends have recommended this book to me and even warned me to read it with a tissue box. Unfortunately, the story did not live up to the hype...or even its movie adaptation for that matter. I didn't end up crying and I barely laughed at the "funny, little awkward moments". If it wasn't for the 'okay' ending, I would have probably ended up giving this disappointment 2 stars.

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Here was everything I found wrong with this book:
1. The romance was SO FAKE!!! At the end of the book, I was still wondering why Hazel and Gus fell in love in the first place. This basically destroyed every single depressing moment for me in the book and left my eyes dry. I kinda felt like John Green rounded up these two characters just to write some sad outcome of their brief romance.
2. I didn't like either Hazel or Gus. The lack of attachment I had for these two protagonists made me very apathetic throughout the entire story. And thus, instead of reading the intended heart-wrenching novel that Green wrote, I was very bored. Hazel was a very flat character and Gus was probably even flatter. Green constructs these pretentiously long monologues for these two teenagers that just seems outlandishly impractical. Yes, cancer and diseases make people come to terms with their mortality and explore ideas of existentialism, but it does not suddenly make teenagers 30 years wiser. And since Hazel seems to only read her favorite book a billion times throughout the story, I questioned how cancer made her brain so mature.

When I read Me Before You, a book with similar themes of love and mortality, I really, really enjoyed it. The characters were vibrant and real; the relationship had depth...something I felt was severely lacking in this novel. Maybe I set my expectations too high, but towards the last five chapters of this book, I basically wanted to finish the book for the sake of finishing. And good books should never let you feel that way.
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Overall, this was a short and quick read, but it wasn't for me. I liked the concepts and themes presented by the author, but the interactions between the characters really killed it for me.

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