[book-info]

Books that receive all the hype tend to put me off. I’m not sure if it’s arrogance that I’m above the crowd or if it’s a fear that I’ll miss it and be left on the outside looking at the “in-crowd”. This is my confession for putting off reading The Fault in Our Stars What made me pick it up after putting it off for so long? I fell in love with a song from the soundtrack: Boom Clap. Once I realized it was part of the soundtrack I had to read it.

I try to go into most books without any expectations but when a book is talked about as much as The Fault in Our Stars, you end up picking up things. I was concerned that I knew too much about it and had subconscious expectations. I was worried I would like it; that there was nothing to surprise me. And I know this novel was supposed to hit me in the feels. Thankfully, I was wrong.

The most surprising part of The Fault in Our Stars, for me anyway, is that I laughed. A lot. It felt right but it felt wrong too. These were kids who were battling or had battled cancer. I wasn’t supposed to laugh but John Green made me anyway. I knew then that I was in trouble. You see, if Green can make me laugh discussing a topic that society has taught us is an inappropriate subject for laughter, I knew there would be no holds barred when we got to the parts that would make me cry.

I am an emotional reader and I’ll get teary-eyed during the happy parts of a romance or during a sad part in any book but I rarely ugly-cry. The last book to make me ugly cry was The Book Thief in December 2013. That was until The Fault in Our Stars in August. Books like this leave a mark. They become the books that when years from now you’ll see a copy and sadly shake your head while you remember the bittersweet time that you read it.

In closing I want to address the people who I know are saying “Why would you ever want to read a book that makes you cry/about cancer/fill-in-the-blank bad thing?” I can’t speak to why everyone does but for me it’s a sense of comfort. We hear more bad news than good on any given day. It seems like sensationalized media is intent on keeping us in constant fear of something. John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars shows us that truly awful things happen to you average good person. Green doesn’t sugarcoat it, but he does something better. He shows that while these people come out the other side of what they are dealing with changed, it isn’t the end of their world and they survive. I think it’s a lesson we could all learn.