The Fault in Our Stars

Starred review from January 16, 2012
If there's a knock on John Green (and it's more of a light tap considering he's been recognized twice by the Printz committee) it's that he keeps writing the same book: nerdy guy in unrequited love with impossibly gorgeous girl, add road trip. His fourth novel departs from that successful formula to even greater success: this is his best work yet. Narrator Hazel Grace Lancaster, 16, is (miraculously) alive thanks to an experimental drug that is keeping her thyroid cancer in check. In an effort to get her to have a life (she withdrew from school at 13), her parents insist she attend a support group at a local church, which Hazel characterizes in an older-than-her-years voice as a "rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness." Despite Hazel's reluctant presence, it's at the support group that she meets Augustus Waters, a former basketball player who has lost a leg to cancer. The connection is instant, and a (doomed) romance blossoms. There is a road tripâAugustus, whose greatest fear is not of death but that his life won't amount to anything, uses his "Genie Foundation" wish to take Hazel to Amsterdam to meet the author of her favorite book. Come to think of it, Augustus is pretty damn hot. So maybe there's not a new formula at work so much as a gender swap. But this iteration is smart, witty, profoundly sad, and full of questions worth asking, even those like "Why me?" that have no answer. Ages 14âup. Agent: Jodi Reamer, Writers House.

Starred review from January 15, 2012
He's in remission from the osteosarcoma that took one of his legs. She's fighting the brown fluid in her lungs caused by tumors. Both know that their time is limited. Sparks fly when Hazel Grace Lancaster spies Augustus "Gus" Waters checking her out across the room in a group-therapy session for teens living with cancer. He's a gorgeous, confident, intelligent amputee who always loses video games because he tries to save everyone. She's smart, snarky and 16; she goes to community college and jokingly calls Peter Van Houten, the author of her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, her only friend besides her parents. He asks her over, and they swap novels. He agrees to read the Van Houten and she agrees to read his--based on his favorite bloodbath-filled video game. The two become connected at the hip, and what follows is a smartly crafted intellectual explosion of a romance. From their trip to Amsterdam to meet the reclusive Van Houten to their hilariously flirty repartee, readers will swoon on nearly every page. Green's signature style shines: His carefully structured dialogue and razor-sharp characters brim with genuine intellect, humor and desire. He takes on Big Questions that might feel heavy handed in the words of any other author: What do oblivion and living mean? Then he deftly parries them with humor: "My nostalgia is so extreme that I am capable of missing a swing my butt never actually touched." Dog-earing of pages will no doubt ensue. Green seamlessly bridges the gap between the present and the existential, and readers will need more than one box of tissues to make it through Hazel and Gus' poignant journey. (Fiction. 15 & up)

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Starred review from February 1, 2012

Gr 9 Up-"It's not fair," complains 16-year-old Hazel from Indiana. "The world," says Gus, her new friend from her teen support group, "is not a wish-granting factory." Indeed, life is not fair; Hazel and Gus both have cancer, Hazel's terminal. Despite this, she has a burning obsession: to find out what happens to the characters after the end of her favorite novel. An Imperial Affliction by Dutch author Peter Van Houten is about a girl named Anna who has cancer, and it ends in mid-sentence (presumably to indicate a life cut short), a stylistic choice that Hazel appreciates but the ambiguity drives her crazy. Did the "Dutch Tulip Man" marry Anna's mom? What happened to Sisyphus the Hamster? Hazel asks her questions via email and Van Houten responds, claiming that he can only tell her the answers in person. When she was younger, Hazel used her wish-one granted to sick children from The Genie Foundation-by going to Disney World. Gus decides to use his to take Hazel to Amsterdam to meet the author. Like most things in life, the trip doesn't go exactly as anticipated. Van Houten is a disappointment, but Hazel, who has resisted loving Gus because she doesn't want to be the grenade that explodes in his life when she dies, finally allows herself to love. Once again Green offers a well-developed cast of characters capable of both reflective thought and hilarious dialogue. With his trademark humor, lovable parents, and exploration of big-time challenges, The Fault in Our Stars is an achingly beautiful story about life and loss.-Ragan O'Malley, Saint Ann's School, Brooklyn, NY

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2012
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* At 16, Hazel Grace Lancaster, a three-year stage IVcancer survivor, is clinically depressed. To help her deal with this, her doctor sends her to a weekly support group where she meets Augustus Waters, a fellow cancer survivor, and the two fall in love. Both kids are preternaturally intelligent, and Hazel is fascinated with a novel about cancer called An Imperial Affliction. Most particularly, she longs to know what happened to its characters after an ambiguous ending. To find out, the enterprising Augustus makes it possible for them to travel to Amsterdam, where Imperial's author, an expatriate American, lives. What happens when they meet him must be left to readers to discover. Suffice it to say, it is significant. Writing about kids with cancer is an invitation to sentimentality and pathosor worse, in unskilled hands, bathos. Happily, Green is able to transcend such pitfalls in his best and most ambitious novel to date. Beautifully conceived and executed, this story artfully examines the largest possible considerationslife, love, and deathwith sensitivity, intelligence, honesty, and integrity. In the process, Green shows his readers what it is like to live with cancer, sometimes no more than a breath or a heartbeat away from death. But it is life that Green spiritedly celebrates here, even while acknowledging its pain. In its every aspect, this novel is a triumph. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Green's promotional genius is a force of nature. After announcing he would sign all 150,000 copies of this title's first print run, it shot to the top of Amazon and Barnes & Noble's best-seller lists six months before publication.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

Starred review from March 1, 2012
I suppose this is a cancer book, but as its inimitable heroine Hazel would say, "It's not a cancer book, because cancer books suck." Evoking yet transcending such teen-illness classics as Paige Dixon's May I Cross Your Golden River? (rev. 2/76) and Alice Bach's Waiting for Johnny Miracle, John Green's fourth solo novel, and first to be narrated by a girl, is a lot of things: acerbic comedy, sexy romance, and a lightly played, extended meditation on the big questions about life and death. Hazel is controlling her stage four cancer "with the assistance of drizzled oxygen and daily Phalanxifor" -- she has time, but no one knows how much. Augustus Waters, handsome and dashing, lost a leg to osteosarcoma but now seems okay. Their quickly developing (terminal illness giving new meaning to the question, "why wait?") romance is as intellectual as it is physical and emotional, and Green's fans will recognize and enjoy the heady badinage between the two. They will also appreciate the presence of sidekick Isaac, soon to be blind from eye cancer but a generous sharer of friendship as well as of the blackest of jokes. Hazel, the most multi-dimensional yet of John Green Girls, may not be able to change the course of her stars, but she navigates their heartbreaking directives with humor, honesty, and -- while she would probably deny it -- grace. roger sutton

(Copyright 2012 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2012
Green's fourth solo novel is a lot of things: acerbic comedy, sexy romance, and a lightly played, extended meditation on life and death. Narrator Hazel, controlling stage four cancer, is the most multi-dimensional yet of John Green Girls. She may not be able to change the course of her stars, but she navigates their heartbreaking directives with humor, honesty, and--she'd deny it--grace.

(Copyright 2012 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)