The Fault In Our Stars

I finished reading John Green's most recent novel, The Fault In Our Stars, about a week ago but I have been putting off writing anything about it. As a nerdfighter, I decided to preorder the book to ensure a signed copy but I wasn't too into reading it. Most of the reviews of John's previous books that I had read and heard from people who don't watch is Youtube videos were fairly negative. They said that his writing was inconsistant and came across as if he was trying too hard and I could see where they were coming from just by listening to him talk a couple times a week in his videos.

I hated the first chapter of TFIOS. I was immediately bored and really considered closing the book and giving it a permanent place on my bookshelf. I felt that the characters were empty, the descriptions were unprofessional, and overall it didn't grab my attention. However, while on Facebook on the day that I decided to stop reading the book, one of my Facebook friends wrote a status about how much she loved the book. Because of that status, I decided to read on.

The following chapters weren't very interesting either and I'm pretty sure I only finished the book out of boredom and loyalty to nerdfighteria, the community of people who watch John and his brother Hank on Youtube. I never got to like Hazel or Augustus, the two main characters. Their personalities were annoying that the fact that they kept quoting some fake book the whole time really bugged me. They tried to act really philosophical because they were those kids who excused their loneliness with being too cool and dying of cancer but none of anything they do would ever really happen. And the shtick about how some infinities are larger than others— yes, I agree but you don't have to mention that in every other page!  The book repeated itself a lot and not many things were catching or unexpected, making it hard to care about the relationship between these two teenagers.

I felt that Augustus 1.has a name that sounds really bad out loud so I would always skip over it while reading 2.needed to stop comparing Hazel to Natalie Portman 3.should stop putting cigarettes in his mouth "metaphorically" because it was a stupid and pretentious thing to do and 4.was never properly, or at least memorably, described so in my mind he remained a stick-figure with one leg.

Hazel wasn't much better. She owned a knee-length dress from F21, which never happens because everything there is either mini or maxi, and for some reason that really bothered me. I also didn't like the way she spoke or anything else about her.

Whenever I read or watch anything, I always pay attention to the way children treat their parents. Hazel was really moody and the only thing she told the reader about her dad is that he cries a lot and Augustus's parents were about as relevant as house plants. Neither of these are good things.

All in all, I didn't like the book. I think that its a meh read for John's fans but people who don't watch the Youtube videos should stay away from it. The only exception to this is tweens because they will fall for anything and see the improbabilities as romantic.