The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green

Genre: Realistic fiction
Age: 13+

Hazel has cancer in her lungs. She uses an oxygen tank. Her parents hover over her at her every waking moment. Her mom wants her to get out more, and so she's been forced to attend a depressing cancer support group for kids like her - kids whose days are numbered. She tolerates the support group, and doesn't really enjoy it. But one day a boy called Augustus Waters shows up, a friend of her friend Isaac's. He used to have cancer, and now has one prosthetic leg, and he and Hazel immediately like each other. They start to spend time together, and Hazel makes Augustus read her favorite book, and he makes her read his. But soon they discover that they like-like each other.
But Augustus has been keeping a secret from Hazel. And when he decides to tell her, both of their new lives are going to change.

At first, I expected this book to just be very overrated. Then I read it.
It was AMAZINGLY GOOD. This is a new type of love story, with many more obstacles specially created for a book about cancer. It has so many emotions, tightly packed into a thick-with-thoughts novel, told in the slightly sarcastic (but definitely unique) voice of Hazel. And then a plot twist occurs nearer to the end of the novel that for me, at least, changed everything. My friends who read The Fault in Our Stars cried at the end. That is the level of the storytelling and plot in this book. In other words, it is EXCELLENT.