Book Review: The Fault In Our Stars

I am gutted. My heart is flip-flopping on the floor like a freshly caught fish, wanting only to go back to how it was before the lure sank in. That’s how I feel.

But I can’t go back to how it was before I read The Fault In Our Stars and got hooked – as surely as that trout – on the love story between teenagers Augustus and Hazel. WTF? They are teenagers for goodness sake. Teenagers who text and whine to their parents and play video games. What’s so heart-rending about that? (Editor’s note: There is actually a big reason why this is so heart-rending, but I’m not going to spoil it here. Read the first page of the book before you buy it.)

Augustus and Hazel also fall in love in such a real way that it takes you right back to high school and the way you felt when a certain someone waited for you in the parking lot and walked you to Spanish. (Also, it is a lot less embarrassing to be seen in public reading FIOS versus the Twilight series.)

You get positively caught up in the story -- such a hopeful meditation on first love -- which then karate chops you right in the solar plexus. It knocks the wind out of your lungs, but it also knocks the hope out of your heart.

And that’s the feeling that stays with you. Sort of like when that certain
Spanish-class-walkin’ someone broke it to you that he’d be walking some other girl to class from here on out.

And it makes you wonder if first love is worth it after all, if the joy ever matched the pain. And so you listen to lots of Ani Di Franco and eat lots of pizza and, like Celine Dion says, your heart does go on, but in a way that’s just a little bit changed.

The Fault In Our Stars introduces you to people whose hearts haven’t been changed yet. And that’s why they stay in ours. (Available on amazon for around $10.)