The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I honestly cannot say enough positive things about this book. It is exquisitely written, and it will make you cry, and laugh, and fall in love with words, and fall in love with the characters, etc, etc. It is a #1 New York Times Bestseller, which basically means that you have automatic sway when you introduce it because if that many people like it, then it has to be good, right? Right. Cliche as that may seem, I see why it is so popular. It is rare that a work of fiction transcends barriers of age and gender--a lot of the time, a book written from a girl's point of view is thought to be "girly" and vice versa for a book told from a male point of view--it is thought of as "masculine". However, The Fault in Our Stars tells a beautifully woven narrative from the point of view of Hazel, a sixteen-year-old girl with terminal cancer. As blunt as that may seem, the book does a fantastic job of insuring the reader that although she is sixteen and a girl, the things that she feels and the thoughts that she thinks could be any of us. We are taken on an emotional roller coaster that is heartbreakingly relatable. There were many points while reading this book that I actually had to stop reading because I couldn't tolerate how much I related to it. Like it was so good that it actually hurt. Books very rarely can do that, so it's a huge deal. You will lose yourself in this story, absolutely lose yourself. I promise.

The thing about this book is that it's really not about cancer so much as it is about the human condition. There is a quote from the book which says, "That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt." And that is a fantastic way to encapsulate the book's purpose--it captures every emotion associated with being human. To live is to feel, and to live thoroughly is to feel things acutely, almost dangerously so. Perhaps this book falls under the "multicultural" category because it deals with a specialized topic--cancer--but honestly, it goes so far beyond that. It paints a startlingly real picture of what it means to be human, and I think that is something far too precious to be ignored.