One minute you're waiting for the sky to fall, next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all.
---Lovers in a Dangerous Time
Hazel Grace is sixteen years old and running out of time. Dying of thyroid cancer, bought precious months of time by a miraculous cancer drug, she spends her remaining days obssesed with the novel An Imperial Affliction. The book ends in mid sentence, frustrating her to no end. Her mother insists she attend a support group for kids with cancer, wherein she meets Augustus Waters (whose only on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friends), and the two spark a relationship and seek out An Imperial Affliction's reclusive author.
Okay, I might want to drop everything and spend the rest of my life fighting cancer now. This book is fucking miraculous. This is a novel written specifically to spite aspiring writers by being so damn good.
Okay, okay, I'll actually try to review this.
The characters are a little too eloquent for their age, in my eyes. That gets distracting. I think thats the only fault I can think of, since the characters are excellent, and believable. They aren't saintly angles that they mock in the subgenre of cancer books.
Part of what makes this book really good is that in large part it was inspired by a real person: Esther Earl, a sixteen year old girl who had cancer. She isn't an expy of Hazel: Hazel was sullen, Esther chirpy and happy despite the fact she was dying. She was part of the Nerdfighter's, John Green's followers, and had an active vlog that she updated until a week before she passed away. It has an intimate and personal, realistic look at cancer, especially for someone so young.
But its never sad or saccharine. Augustus and Hazel are in love, true and deep. Love that, unforunately, comes with a hefty price tag. But the upside is every second was spent in deep, honest passion. Passion often sought, rarely found.
Some infinities are longer than others, and the infinity spent reading this book was not wasted.
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