The Fault in Our Stars is best-selling author John Green’s hugely popular young adult novel about two teenage cancer patients who find each other and fall in love. I was so happy that the book lived up to its hype – The Fault in Our Stars is smart and delightful, even while dealing with a tragic subject.

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I read The Fault in Our Stars as part of the 2024 Thoughtful Reading Challenge. October’s challenge was to read a book with a primary or secondary character who is blind because October is Blindness Awareness Month. The two protagonists in the book have a friend named Isaac who goes completely blind due to cancer. Either I’m a bad researcher, or there is a dearth of novels with blind characters. I couldn’t find many options. I think I found a meaningful niche, all you budding fiction writers!

I want to begin with a The Fault in Our Stars book summary.

Hazel Grace is a teenage cancer patient with a sharp wit and a tender heart. Humor is one of her primary coping mechanisms even though her illness fills her lungs with fluid and makes it hard for her to breathe. She finds a kindred spirit in Augustus, whom she meets a support group for “cancer kids.”

Augustus has lost a leg to cancer, although his cancer is in remission when he meets Hazel. The tall, fit, blue-eyed boy with the goofy smile immediately captures Hazel’s attention, and the admiration is mutual.

As they’re getting to know each other, they learn that they both enjoy reading. They exchange books – Augustus gives her a book based on a shoot-em-up video game (about which Hazel reacts with characteristic humor), while she shares her very favorite book, which is titled An Imperial Affliction. The novel has special meaning to Hazel and becomes a central focus of the story line.

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An Imperial Affliction is about a girl with cancer whose story loosely parallels Hazel’s life. But it finishes with loose ends that Hazel desperately wants tied up. Hazel especially wants to know what happens to the mother of the sick girl because she’s a sweet kid who is worried about what will happen to her own mother when she dies. However, the author never wrote another novel, let alone a sequel.

Hazel and Augustus continue to bond. Their thoughts can be pretty deep and their conversations sparkle. They both become increasingly curious about the ending of An Imperial Affliction, and when email correspondence with the author doesn’t provide them with answers, they fly to Amsterdam to visit the author.

Although the author turns out to be an unhelpful lush, the trip cements Hazel’s and Augustus’s love for each other. But, alas, cancer… (I give The Fault in Our Stars two out of five tears on the cry-o-meter. Fortunately, John Green didn’t drag out the sad parts.)

The Fault in Our Stars is so good! I had been avoiding it because of all the hype – my one act of being counterculture is staying away from books I think are overhyped. Sad, huh?

The characters are so well done. It is refreshing to see normal family dynamics instead of stereotypical teens who openly disdain their parents. The kids and parents love, respect, and joke with each other. They’re on this terrible cancer journey together as a united team.

I also enjoyed the clever dialog:

Hazel: “There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”

Me at that age: “Uh, like, let’s go to the mall.”

The preceding quote from Hazel is the very first thing she ever says to Augustus. From that point on, their conversations are usually witty and insightful.

And the use of humor in the novel is excellent. Hazel and Augustus are smart and funny, even in the face of all the horrible things cancer brings with it. I am a strong proponent of using humor as a coping mechanism – it’s one of the things that has kept me alive for many years despite my own terminal illness. Well done, Mr. Green!

The Fault in Our Stars will appeal to a broad audience of readers, not just teens and young adults. I recommend that you add it to your reading list!

If you’ve read The Fault in Our Stars, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Did you take the challenge and read a book with a blind character this month? Please share!

**Reminder – November’s challenge is to read a book centered on a family. Tons of possibilities!