The Fault In Our Stars, by John Green

This book basically took all emotional books I've ever read and then made them look like... Disneyland. I was literally crying so hard I couldn't read the words. That has never happened in my whole life.

I liked how down right real it felt. Usually I read fantasy and such, but I really liked this. It wasn't some crappy teenage drama/love story. There wasn't this perfect, attractive, dark hero. There wasn't an annoying girl who the guy loves even though we all hate her.

There was however, a flawed, attractive, hilarious boy who might have pushed Leo Valdez down a rung on the Hierarchy of Fictional Males Addi Is In Love With. (Sorry, Leo. I still love you.)  And a very pretty, extremely smart girl who I want to be my friend. Seriously. 

The first half of the book was perfect. It was almost completely happy. 

Oh, Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace Lancaster. I love you. 

I liked the book a lot, from the beginning. But the moment I fell completely, head-over-heels in love with the book was page 33. Augustus asks what Hazel's favorite book is and Hazel (she's the narrator) tells the reader this:

"My favorite book, by a wide margin, was An Imperial Affliction, but I didn't like to tell people about it. Sometimes, you read a book, and it fills you with this weird, evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal. And it wasn't even that the book was so good or anything; it was just the author, Peter Van Houten, seemed to understand me in weird and impossible ways. An Imperial Affliction was my book, the way my body was my body and my thoughts were my thoughts."

And then I fell in love. Because I've felt that. The weird, evangelical zeal, and the books that are just mine. But I never heard it said, and certainly not so eloquently and beautifully. 

Augustus writes his number in a book he lets Hazel borrow, and I'm like "Well, that's genius. Take notes, boys." He always says he's "grand" when people ask how he is. He texts Hazel and freaks out about the end of a book, and there I started cracking up because it reminded me of me and one of my friends. He has a prosthetic leg. He has non-lit cigarettes all the time because it's a metaphor. He wants to be a hero, but he really isn't. He's a terrible driver. He hates basketball, even though he's really good.

And Hazel. She thinks deep thoughts. She reads. She flirts, even though she doesn't really know how. She has a couple poems memorized. She hates the violence in movies. She sucks at video games, but plays them with Isaac and Augustus to make them happy. She has crappy lungs. She's scared of being a grenade. She's taking college classes, even though she's like sixteen. She thinks it's an injustice against scrambled eggs that they are only a breakfast food. She's crazy smart. 

They kiss and stuff, but it's not like the kissing in any other young adult novel I've ever read. They're slow, and scared. It's not "hot" or anything. It's just... precious. Because they are seriously terrified of hurting each other (they're dying. Of course they're terrified).

Augustus says, on the very last page, "I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."

It was the most poetic, beautiful book I've read in a long time.

I love it. Partly because, honestly, Hazel and Gus reminded me of me and a friend of mine. Only, we're less romantic and less... dying. >_>

I disagree with parts of it, of course. They cuss quite a bit. I don't really approve of teenager sex. But I understand their emotions and choices, even though I don't necessarily like them.

I loooooooooooooooooooved this part: 

"'Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them,' I said. 

Isaac shot me a look. 'Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?' 

I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer. But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it."

That, my friend, is quite possibly the best definition of love ever written in a modern young adult work of fiction.

Now go read the book.