YA Review: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Sixteen year old Hazel Grace Lancaster ("Just Hazel") knows she is going to die of cancer, but she doesn't know when. She was seemingly on her last few breaths of life when a medical miracle bought her a few years. Now, a few years later, she is staring down the inevitability of death, and her doctor sends her to a cancer support group to help with her depression. There, she meets Augustus Waters, an intelligent, handsome, one and a half-legged former basketball player and teenaged cancer survivor. The two very intelligent teens ponder life, love, and fate, and their conversations elevate the novel from simple teenage love story to a broader question of life and its meaning, or at least its possibilities. Hazel is obsessed with a novel called "An Imperial Affliction," about a girl who dies of cancer. The fictitious novel ends in the middle of a sentence, signifying death, but Hazel is desperate to find out what happened to everyone else in the book. Augustus uses his wits to contact the author, now living in Amsterdam, which sets in motion a pivitol chain of events.
 The Fault in Our Stars is John Green's most well-written novel to date, and the first with a female narrator. It has been very popular in the library thus far and I expect it to be in high demand for the next year or two based on the publicity Green has been able to generate. The Fault in our Stars is a book worthy of praise (although I must disagree with the 'best of the year' nods) and very well worth reading.